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NEW ENGLAND AND ITS NEIGHBORS 



^^S^>^i^^ 




Springtime in an Old Garden 



NEW ENGLAND 



AND ITS NEIGHBORS 




i * 





WRITTEN AND 
ILLUSTRATED BY 

CLIFTON JOHNSON 






Published by THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Neiu York McMII 

LONDON : MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 



Copyright, igo2 

by The Macmillan Company 



THE LtiRARY OF 

0Of*GRES8, 
TvwD CoPtee Reosived 

OCT. \ 1902 

CopvmouT vtrrvN 

0L*S8 a, KXo Mo. 

^% 1 ^ 1 
CO^ 8. 



A CONSIDERABLE portion of 
the material included in this 
volume was first published in 
The Out look, Woman'' s 
Home Companion, The Pil- 
grim, Frank Leslie'' s Popu- 
lar Monthly, The New 
England Magazine, The 
Boston Transcript, Town 
and Countr-^, The Interior 
and in Harper'' s Weekly. 



Eledrotyped 

and 

Printed 

at the 

Norzuood Press 

Norwood, Muss. 



Contents 



I. Midwinter in Valley Forge 

II. When the White Mountains are White 

III. A Ruin beside Lake Champlain 

IV. In the Adirondacks 
V. The Home of Fenimore Cooper 

VI. An Historic Town in Connecticut 

VII. A Jaunt on Long Island 

VIII. Life on a Green Mountain Top 

IX. Down in Maine . 

X. Along the Juniata 

XI. Dwellers among the Catskills . 

XII. A Canal-boat Voyage on the Hudson 

XIII, The Autumn Cattle Show 

XIV. Cape Cod Folks . 



Page 
I 

24 

52 

70 

106 

I 24 

168 
1 96 
215 

240 
264 
287 
313 



List of Illustrations 



Springtime in an Old Garden 

In Valley Forge . . . ■ . 

Valley Forge Pond .... 

The Site of the Old Forge 

One of the Bridges over " Valley Crick " 

The Schuylkill at Valley Forge . 

A Valley Forge Footpath . 

The Entrance to the Headquarters Mansion 

The House which was Washington's Headquarters 

A Woodland Teamster 

A Load of Logs on a Forest Roadway 

Work at a Logging-camp Landing 

The Choppers 

A Woodsman's Rocking-chair . 

A Mountain Ox-team 

In the Sleeping Apartment 

A Corner of the Camp Kitchen 

A Scaler .... 

A Logging-camp Dwelling 

Considering his Neighbor's Fields 

In Crown Point Village . 





Page 


^rontispiece 


\^ 


• 


I 


Facing 


4 


• 


8 


• 


9 


• 


13 


Facing 


18 


• 


21 


• 


23 


• 


24 


Facing 


26 


Facing 


33 




35 




37 




40 




43 




46 


Facing 


48 




51 




52 




54 



List of Illustrations 



Mending the Pasture Fence .... Facing 

A Lake Champlain Ferry ..... Facing 

Rhubarb ...... 

Ticonderoga Ruins ..... 

The Pasture in which stand the Old Fortifications 
A Fisherman ...... 

An Adirondaclc Farmer ..... Facing 

Shelling Seed Corn . . . . 

Bringing in the Cows after their Day's Grazing 
Picking up Chips ..... 

The Kitchen Door of a Log House . . . Facing 

Sowing Oats ...... 

Spinning Yarn for the Family Stockings 

A Home in a Valley .... 

A Roadside Chat ..... 

On Cooperstown Street .... 

Looking toward the Town from an Eastern Hillslope 

The Margin of the Lake ..... Facing 

Putting on a Fresh Coat of Paint 

Getting Ready to plant his Garden . . . Facing 

Spring Work in a Farm Field 

The Monument on the Site of Otsego Hall . . Facing 

The Graves of J. Fenimore Cooper and his Wife 

Setting out the House-plants 

Saybrook Street ..... 

In a Back Yard ..... 

Ploughing out for Potatoes 



Page 
56 



List of Illustrations 



XI 



A Roadway on the Saybrook Outskirts 

Drawing a Bucket of Water 

In the Old Cemetery 

Cleaning up the Back Yard 

The Seaward Marshlands 

Starting the Garden Parsnips 

A Long Island Stile 

Or. Easthampton Common 

The *' Home, Sweet Home" House 

An Old-fashioned Sitting Room 

A Toll-gate on a Seven Cent Road 

Making Fence Posts 

A Windmiller 

Along Shore at Sag Harbor 

Tinkering the Road 

At the Schoolhouse Door . 

A Trout Stream 

The Fiddler .... 

Grandpa gives the Bovs some Good Advice 

The Rain-water Barrel 

Taking Care of the Baby . 

The Lonely Little Church 

A Home-made Lumber Wagon . 

A Mount Desert Well 

A Lobster-pot 

A Home on the Shore 

Summer Calm 



Facing 
Fachig 

Facing 



Facing 



Facing 



Facing 



Facing 



Page 
31 

34 

^1 

[41 

.46 

147 

49 

52 

55 

59 
161 
165 

66 

167 
[68 

71 
74 
79 

:i 

'4 
91 
93 
'95 
.96 
199 
201 
202 



Xll 



List of Illustrations 



The Post-office Piazza 








Facing 


Page 

zo6 


An Old Schoolroom 










2IO 


A Moonlit Evening 










214 


The Home Porch . 










215 


The Dooryard Fence 










218 


After the Day's Work 








Facing 


220 


Typical Outbuildings 










224 


A Grist-mill . 










225 


Making Apple-butter 










227 


Childhood Treasures 










230 


Farm Market Wagons 










232 


One of the Street Pumps 








Facing 


237 


On a Village Sidewalk 










238 


The Juniata . 










239 


Old-fashioned Churning 










240 


Digging Potatoes in a Weedy Field 






242 


A Home on the Mountain Side 






245 


The Buckwheat Thresher — Fair Weather o 


r Foul 


? . ' . 


247 


A Morning Wash at the Back Door . 




Facing 


251 


On the Way to the Barn to help Milk 




Facing 


254 


Making Soft Soap . . . . . 




Facing 


257 


Binding Indian Corn 










260 


Considering . 








. 


263 


Trading with a Bumboat 








. 


264 


The Call to Dinner 








Facing 


267 


Visiting 








. 


272 


Drawing Water 








. 


274 



List of Illustrations 



Xlll 



Two Canal-boat Captains 

The Steamer dragging the Tow 

House-cleaning Time 

Arriving in New York 

The "Nigger" Target . 

Children Sightseers . 

Without the Gate . 

The Stage from the Neighboring 

The Cavalcade of Oxen . 

On the Grounds 

To Buy or Not to Buy 

Cooking Apparatus at the Rear 

The Pounding-machine 

Five Cents a Throw at the Doll 

A Village Sign 

Anchoring his Haystacks . 

An Autumn Corn-field 

A Cranberry Picker 

Harvest on a Cranberry Bog 

In Provincetown 

Looking over the Cod Lines 

An Old Wharf 

Public Buildings on the Hilltop 

A Cape Cod Roadway 

The Mowers on the Marshes 



of the 



Tow 



Eating 



Facing 



Tents 



Page 
277 
. 281 
Facing 282 
286 
287 
291 

293 
294 
299 
301 

Facing 303 

307 
Facing 309 

312 
313 
316 

319 
321 

322 
Facing 325 



Facing 



327 
330 
331 
333 
335 



Introductory Note 

This book, like its predecessors and those that may 
follow it, is primarily a study of the rural aspects ot 
national life. The historic or literary background that 
some of the chapters have is only incidental and is in 
no case introduced for its own sake. The general 
title of " Highways and Byways," adopted for the 
American series, indicates very well the writer's itin- 
erary ; but, as for the highways, it is their humbler 
features I love best, and it is these I linger over in 
my pictures and my descriptions. Wherever I go the 
characteristic and picturesque phases of the local farm 
environment always appeal strongly to me, and in 
what I have written I have tried to convey to others 
the same interest I have felt, and at the same time 
have endeavored to give a clear and truthful impression 
of the reality. 

Clifton Johnson. 



New England and its Neighbors 



MIDWINTER IN VALLEY FORGE 





In Valley Forge 



Y impression had been 
that Valley Forge was a 
wild glen, high among 
the mountains, where winter frosts 
and snows held unrelaxing sway 
for many long, dark months every 
year. But in reality its situation 
is neither lofty nor remote, and 
the rigors of the cold are not 
nearly what they are in the states 
farther north. Comparatively lit- 
tle snow falls, and often there is 
not a week's sleighing the winter 
through. 

The Valley is only twenty-three 
miles from Philadelphia, with 
which it has direct connection by 
a railroad that skirts along the 
Schuylkill River. When you alight 



2 New England and its Neighbors 

from the train you find a diminutive station, and, on 
the opposite side of the tracks, a freight-shed and an 
ancient, broken-roofed mill. But immediately beyond 
the old mill is the colonial mansion which was Wash- 
ington's headquarters, and beyond that lies the vil- 
lage — a straggling little place, scattered along several 
diverging roads. A good-sized stream courses north- 
ward through the midst of the hamlet to join the 
Schuylkill, and beside it are two mills. These, like 
the one adjoining the station, are vacant and crumbling. 
The smaller of the two is mostly constructed of wood. 
The other is of brick — a great barrack of a building, 
painted white, with tiny-paned windows of days gone 
by. Near it stand some rows of dilapidated mill cot- 
tages gradually dropping to pieces ; and, taken alto- 
gether, a melancholy air of industrial ruin hangs over 
the Valley. 

A massive dam stems the stream above the big mill, 
but the water-power is in no way utilized, and the 
manufacturing of the present is confined to a racka- 
bones structure on the western outskirts of the village, 
where a stone-crusher reduces to sand a peculiar rock 
from an upland quarry. About five car-loads of sand 
are turned out daily and shipped away to foundries, 
for use in making moulds. 

My acquaintance with Valley Forge began in the 
early evening of a dav in February. I walked from 
the station to the village and looked about vainly in the 



Midwinter in Valley Forge 3 

dusk for a hotel. Finally I appealed to a passer, who 
pointed out one close by. It was girded around by 
ornamental piazzas and surmounted by a very fancy 
cupola, and I had mistaken it for some gentleman's 
villa. Moreover, its spacious grounds were adorned 
with fine trees that gave a touch of the idyllic, though 
the lager-beer signs which their trunks supported were 
something of an offset to this impression. Winter 
visitors are rare, and I took the landlord by surprise. 
He explained apologetically that his cook had just 
left, and he and his father were the only persons in the 
house. They were going to shift for themselves until 
they found another cook, but if I wanted to lodge with 
them, he would get some neighbor to come in and help 
in the kitchen. I accepted the situation, and after I 
had disposed of my luggage I started out for a walk. 

It was a pleasant, quiet night, with a half-moon high 
in the sky. The ground was mostly bare, and the 
wheeling on the frost-bound roads could hardly have 
been better. Only under shadowed banks and on the 
northward-sloping hills was there snow, though the 
streams, wherever the cold had a fair chance at them, 
were frozen tight and fast. Much of the valley was 
overflowed by a long, narrow pond that set back from 
the dam of the large upper mill. On the borders of 
this pond I came across a young fellow regarding the 
ice attentively, and I spoke to him. He had been 
testing the surface with his heels to see if there was 



4 New England and its Neighbors 

skating, and had concluded it had been too much 
softened by the heat of the day, but that it would 
harden up all right during the night. "A good many 
come here skating," he said — "mostly Sundays, and 
other days, and some nights, and daytimes, too." 

I asked him what the name of the stream was, and 
he replied that he'd " be hanged " if he knew. He'd 
never heard it called anything but " the dam." 

Then I inquired the name of the larger stream to 
the north; but he had to "be hanged" again — he'd 
lived here twenty years, all his life — and never heard 
it spoken of as anything except " the river." 

This was not very encouraging, but when we con- 
tinued our chat I found his information about the vil- 
lage itself more definite and satisfactory. Some of the 
people depended wholly on their little farms, but the 
majority of the male population were either employed 
at the quarry on the hill and the stone-crusher, or at a 
brick-yard about two miles distant ; and ten or twelve 
of the village girls went daily by train six miles down 
the river to work in a cotton-mill. He told how 
crowds of people flocked to the Valley in the summer, 
some to stay several days or weeks, but mostly picnick- 
ers who came in the morning and went in the late after- 
noon. There were boats to let on the pond, and the 
summer people " rowed and fished and caught carp 
that weighed thirty pounds." 

I mentioned that from up the hill where I had been 




Valley Forge Pond 
On the hill in the background were the most important of Washington's fortifications 



Midwinter in Valley Forge 5 

before I visited the pond I had seen what looked like 
the lights of a town off to the northeast. 

" Were the lights all in a bunch ? " he asked. 

" Yes," I responded. 

" That's a protectory." 

"A what?" 

"A protectory — some big buildings where they 
keep boys — boys that have been bad. A lot of 'em 
got away last July — took the sheets off their beds and 
tied 'em together and shinned down on 'em from a 
window. They started off for Philadelphia, but they 
were all caught." 

My companion had no overcoat on, and he began to 
get shivery. So he turned his collar up a little closer 
about his ears and said he guessed he'd go over to the 
store. I turned in the other direction and walked up 
the pond on the ice. The village lay behind me, 
wooded hills rose on either side, and with the moon- 
light glistening on the ice, the scene, in spite of its 
loneliness, was pleasantly romantic. 

When I returned to the hotel the evening was well 
advanced and I soon retired. I wished afterward I 
had sat up later, for I had the coldest, most unsympa- 
thetic bed I have met with in all my experience. 
There were plenty of blankets and quilts ; but the 
foundation was a corn-husk mattress that had apparently 
been absorbing frost for months, and I did not get 
comfortably warm all night. 



6 New England and its Neighbors 

In the morning one of the village women had charge 
of the kitchen and prepared the breakfast. I had just 
corrfe down to the office when she put her head in at 
the door and asked, " Will yees eat now? " 

The two men of the establishment rose and led the 
way through several cold vacant rooms and passages 
to the rear of the house. They themselves ate in the 
kitchen, but I was directed to a corner of one of the 
tables in the adjoining dining room. It was not a very 
sociable arrangement, and I liked it the less because the 
little stove at my elbow only succeeded in tempering 
the chilly atmosphere of the big apartment. Conver- 
sation was confined to a few remarks passed with the 
substitute cook. 

" I've had to spind the biggest part of me time here 
this winter," she said. " The young girruls the hotel 
do get will not stay. It is too cowld and lonesome. 
They likes the city betther ; and so I have to be always 
runnin' in to help from my house that's up here for- 
nent the ould mill." 

I noticed her house later in the morning when I was 
out walking. Around it was much litter and a curious 
conglomeration of patched-up shanties for the domestic 
animals, which included a lively brood of nondescript 
fowls and a sober family goat. All in all the place 
looked as if it had been transplanted bodily from the 
woman's native Ireland. 

That visitors to the Valley were many was attested 



Midwinter in Valley Forge 7 

by the numerous wayside signs warning against tres- 
passing. These were a characteristic and predominant 
feature of the landscape. They were set up on posts 
and tacked to trees and fences everywhere and sug- 
gested a wild raid of tourists in the season. Most of 
them threatened you with the law, but others confined 
themselves to a laconic, " Keep Off! " 

The day was gentle and springlike, the atmosphere 
full of haze and odorous of coal gas from the engines 
of the freight trains that were constantly throbbing and 
hissing along the railway. The mildness of Nature's 
mood made it far from easy to call up the mental 
picture of the hardships of that far-gone winter when 
Washington was there, and any sentiment of seclusion 
was impossible with that noisy, sulphurous railroad 
immediately at hand and the knowledge that it could 
carry me straight to the heart of Philadelphia in little 
more than half an hour. 

I think the casual student of history fancies that 
Valley Forge sheltered the whole patriot army. On 
the contrary, only a small portion of the troops dwelt 
there. At the rear of Washington's headquarters the 
life guards were encamped, and across "Valley Crick" 
were General Stirling's men ; but the rest of the army 
was over the hill eastward. The area of ground suit- 
able for camping in the Valley itself is not large, for to 
the south it almost at once becomes a narrow, irregular 
defile hemmed in by steep slopes of loose stones. 



8 



New England and its Neighbors 



A half mile up the ravine stood the old forge — an 
iron-working plant that was established long before the 
Revolution, and that was known in its earlier days as 
the Mount Joy forge. It did a flourishing business 
and employed many men and teams. John Potts, a 
Quaker, purchased it in 1757, and immediately after- 
ward built at the mouth of the creek a flour-mill and 




The Site of the Old Forge 

a stout stone residence. Just before the war this dwell- 
ing and mill passed to his son Isaac, in whose posses- 
sion they were when Washington made his official 
home in the house. 

Another half mile up the Valley beyond the site of 
the old forge the hills cease and the road, which hitherto 
has been creeping along the margin of the stream, goes 
through a covered wooden bridge of picturesque type 



Midwinter in Valley Forge 9 

and strikes off in several divisions across the rolling 
farmlands that sweep away as far as the eye can see. 
On this side of the hills all the oldest farm-houses for 




One of the Bridges over "Valley Crick" 

miles around were headquarters of Revolutionary 
generals in that dismal winter — of Lafayette, of 
Knox, Stirling, and others — substantial structures of 
stone that bid fair to last for many generations yet. 

While looking about over here I met a man trudging 
along smoking his pipe. He wore an overcoat dyed the 
color of rust by long exposure to the sun and weather, 
and under his arm he carried a bag. I made some 
inquiry about the road, but he could not help me. 
He said he did not often come up this way. His 
tramping ground lay more to the south. All the 
farmers there knew him and let him sleep in their 



lO New England and its Neighbors 

barns. He made a business of gathering water-cresses 
in the brooks, but they had been all frozen by recent cold 
weather, and he could get none to fill his bag to-day. 

I at length took a byway leading toward the heights, 
and soon was in the brushy woods, where I found the 
snow lying six or eight inches deep. As I approached 
the summit of the hills I came on the old-time intrench- 
ments skirting around the crest of the ridges. They 
were not imposing, yet they were clearly marked — a 
ditch, and, behind it, a low, flattened embankment with 
a path along the top kept well trodden by sightseers. 
I followed this sinuous line whitened by the snow for 
some distance. The hilltop was very silent. At times 
I heard the cheerful twitter of the chickadees, and once 
a hound came baying through the trees, with his nose 
to the ground, zigzagging after a rabbit track. A hawk 
circled high overhead and turned its head sidewise to 
get a look at me, and somewhere down in the Valley a 
bevy of crows were cawing. 

A little below the intrenchments were the heavy 
earthwork squares of two forts, one commanding the 
approaches from the south, the other from the east. 
An outer line of intrenchments was thrown up about a 
mile from those on the hills ; but they lay through the 
cultivated farm fields and have long ago disappeared. 
Between the two lines of earthworks the main army 
was stationed, and there the soldiers put up their little 
log huts. On the bleak December days while these 



Midwinter in Valley Forge ii 

were building and the work of fortifying was going on, 
the troops had no shelter save their tents. The huts 
were sixteen feet long, fourteen wide, and six and one- 
half high. They were banked up outside with earth, 
and the cracks between the logs were chinked with 
clay, while the roofs were of logs split into rude planks 
or slabs. The buildings were regularly arranged in 
streets, and each was the home of twelve men. 

Every cabin had at one end a fireplace of clay- 
daubed logs, but, with the bare earth floor underfoot, 
comfort must have been well-nigh impossible. Besides, 
the winter is reputed to have been uncommonly cold 
and snowy, and the men were very inadequately clothed 
and fed. Sometimes they were without meat, some- 
times even lacked bread. Disease, too, was rampant, 
and smallpox ravaged the camp. Privation made the 
troops mutinous, and at times it seemed as if " in all 
human probability the army must dissolve," and the 
actual strength of the army was reduced to barely four 
thousand who could be depended on for service. Wash- 
ington affirmed on December 23d that over twenty-nine 
hundred men were ineffective " because they are bare- 
foot and otherwise unfit for duty." Scarcity of blankets, 
he says, compels numbers to " sit up all night by fires, 
instead of taking comfortable rest in the natural way." 

A congressional committee which visited the camp 
reported that many lives were sacrificed for want of 
straw or other materials to raise the men when they 



12 New England and its Neighbors 

slept from the cold and wet earth. The horses died 
of starvation, and the men themselves often had to do 
the work of beasts of burden, with improvised hand- 
carts or carrying heavy loads on their backs. The 
dilapidated soldiery were as badly off with regard to 
firearms as they were in other respects. Some would 
have muskets, while others in the same company 
had carbines, fowling-pieces, and rifles. These were 
covered with rust, half of them without bayonets, 
and many from which not a single shot could be fired. 
Frequently the men carried their powder in tin boxes 
and cow-horns instead of in the regulation pouches. 

The condition of the army was primarily due to the 
feebleness of the Union of States and the lack of power 
on the part of Congress to levy taxes or to enforce its 
edicts. The states were jealous of each other, and 
there was fear that the army would assume control of 
the country if it was allowed too much power. Yet, 
even so, the hardships of the troops were not all a 
necessity. Incompetence, as usual, played its part in 
the commissary department ; there were supplies in 
plenty, it is said, but they were in the wrong place, and 
often Washington could only obtain food by foraging 
far and wide through the country round about. Many 
of the farmers were hostile, and, to save their grain 
from seizure, they stored it away unthreshed in sheaves. 
If it was to be confiscated, the soldiers themselves must 
wield the flail. 



Midwinter In Valley Forge 



13 



The millers were equally perverse, and In one In- 
stance a lot of glass was ground Into the flour. An 
Investigation followed, and it was decided that the 
person guilty of this mischief was a Quaker Tory by 
the name of Roberts. A detail of troops was sent to 
his mill, and they hanged him in his orchard. 

The Valley Forge encampment was virtually at 
Philadelphia's back door, and an easy road along the 




The Schuylkill at Valley Forge 

banks of the Schuylkill led directly to the city. Yet 
the British army, fifteen or twenty thousand strong, 
stayed revelling in the town all through the winter and 
spring. The only excuse offered Is that no spy ever 
got into the American camp or, If he did, he never 
succeeded In returning, and the English did not know 
their enemies' weakness. Perhaps, too, they got an 



14 New England and its Neighbors 

exaggerated idea of the wildness of the country up the 
Schuylkill from the names of some of the river villages 
that intervened between them and the patriots' strong- 
hold — Monayunk and Conshohocken, for instance. 

In the evening after my first day's tramping I visited 
the Valley Forge post-office. It occupied a corner in 
a genuine country store. The ceiling of this emporium 
was low and dingy, the counters rude, and the shelves 
were piled full of a most varied assortment of goods. 
Posters hung here and there advertising plug tobacco 
and other wares, or announcing prospective auctions of 
the region. Of course the stove in the centre of the 
room was hedged around with men smoking and ab- 
sorbing opinions and news from one another. Their 
clatter was going full tilt when I came in, but at once 
subsided into mild-voiced and occasional remarks. I 
sat down at some remove from them to write a letter, 
and they gradually recovered. 

All but one of the men had their hats on. The 
exception was a thin, elderly man who wore slippers 
and was apparently a part of the store. The others 
addressed him as " Uncle Buxton." He was actual 
uncle to the postmaster, I believe, and adopted uncle 
to the rest of the community. I noticed presently 
that he was speaking about a well he was having dug, 
and was complaining that the diggers did " a good bit 
o' torkin', but mighty little work." 

" I reckon it's too near the road," commented the 



Midwinter in Valley Forge 15 

man at Uncle Buxton's right. " Y' see every one 
goin' along has to stop 'n' ask all about it and tell 
what they think on't." 

" Henry Shaw's sick again," remarked a man in a 
fur cap, who had established himself conveniently near 
the box full of sawdust that served as a spittoon. 

" What's he got this time ? " some one inquired. 

" They say it's pneumonia." 

" That there's what they used to call inflammation of 
the lungs," Uncle Buxton declared. 

" About all the diseases hev changed names since I 
was a boy," said the man in the fur cap, shifting his 
quid. 

" That's so," assented Uncle Buxton. " I was up 
to my niece's week afore last and I was coughin' some 
and she says, ' Why, Uncle Buxton, you've got the 
grip.' 

" ' No, I ain't ! ' says I. 

" ' Yes, you have ! ' says she. 

"'No, I ain't,' I says, 'I've got a bad cold, but I 
ain't got no grip. It's just a bad cold, same as I had 
when I was a boy.' But if you have a bad cold now, 
people call it the grip." 

"And if you hev the grip now," said the fur-capped 
man, " they think they got to send right off for a medi- 
cal doctor. Why, when I was a boy, my mother used 
to doctor us — never thought of runnin' to a profes- 
sional for every little thing. My mother used to 



1 6 New England and its Neighbors 

always every year pick St. John's-wort and life-ever- 
lastin', horse-mint, penny-r'y'l 'n' such things in the 
pastures, and we had sage 'n' horehound growin' in the 
garden." 

" Any one that understands the herbs knows more 
than the doctors — that's my idee," said a man who 
was addressed by his companions as Jerry. 

" Yes, and you c'n often cure yourself a good many 
times," affirmed Uncle Buxton, " if you only have a 
min' to. Gorry ! I know I used to have the sore 
throat — had it all the time — and I was a great coffee 
drinker them days — drank it every meal, 'n' I thought 
I'd stop. So I did, 'n' my sore throat got well, 'n' a 
while after mother said to me, ' Albert, won't you have 
a cup o* coffee ? I got some all made up fresh ' ; 'n' I 
said I didn't care if I did ; 'n' the next mornin' I had my 
sore throat again; 'n' then I decided if 'twas a question 
between sore throat and coffee I'd give up the coffee. 
So I give it up, 'n' that was thirty years ago, 'n' I ain't 
drank a cup of coffee since." 

" I make my own spring medicine," said Jerry — 
" costs me just ten cents. I buy that much worth o' 
cream o' tartar and stir up a spoonful with a little sugar 
in a tumbler o' water every mornin' before breakfast. 
It makes a good drink — about like soda-water." 

" I got a good receipt for a cough," Uncle Buxton 
said, " of the woman in at the bakery down at Con- 
shohocken. She's given that receipt to lots o' folks, 



Midwinter in Valley Forge 17 

and I'd heard of it before I went down there. I had 
a very bad cough and people here said I was consump- 
tive. My brother was always at me to go to a doctor, 
but I said I didn't want no doctor, and one day I was 
in Conshohocken and I went into the bakery and got 
that receipt. It was half a pint o' white wine vinegar, 
half a pound o' rock candy, and two fresh-laid eggs. 
You stewed 'em up together into a kind of syrup, thick 
like jelly. Well, I took half the quantity o' vinegar 
and rock candy and one fresh-laid egg and made a jelly, 
and gin I had used that I was better, and before that I 
was gettin' worse all the time ; and then I fixed up the 
rest, and that cured me." 

"You couldn't 'a' got cured less'n twenty-five 
dollars if you'd gone to a medical doctor," said Jerry. 

" Well, I don't begrudge the doctor his money if he 
cures," remarked the man in the fur cap, " but if he 
don't cure, it comes kind o' tough." 

When I rose to go I glanced at the auction posters 
once more. It occurred to me I might attend one of 
the sales if the distance was not too great. " Where is 
this Wednesday auction to be ? " I asked. 

" That's the one at Howltown, ain't it ? " queried 
some one in the group about the stove. 

" No," put in Uncle Buxton ; "that's four miles from 
here, over at Di'mond Rock." 

"Diamond Rock," I repeated, "how does it get 
that name ? " 



1 8 New England and its Neighbors 

"Why, this 'ere rock's full o' little di'monds," 
responded Uncle Buxton — "crystals, you know. 
There's small holes all over the rock, and you can look 
in and see the di'monds shinin' there, plenty of 'em. 
Folks go with hammers and knock 'em out, so the 
rock is pretty well chipped now." 

" Will any of these mills at Valley Forge ever be 
used again ? " I inquired, changing the subject. 

" 1 don't know, indeed," was Uncle Buxton's reply. 
" They ain't improvin' none. That one by the depot 
is the worst. It's all goin' to wrack, and the top story's 
fell off; but it's nothing like as old as the other two 
mills. The upper mill on the crick was a cotton and 
woollen mill and has got a good water-power and a 
good dam. The old dam washed out in 1865. There 
was a cloudburst up the valley, and the water riz way 
over the banks, roarin' an' rushin' along full of deb-ris 
and carrying away all the bridges, and dams, and every- 
thing. Since the mills all closed. Valley Forge's been 
kind o' a run-down place ; and then, last year, there 
was a minister made us some more trouble." 

" How was that ? " I asked. 

" Why, we was goin' to have a Baptist church built. 
The minister collected the money, and then he spent it 
himself. He was found out and had to leave. Now 
he's up at Perkiomen runnin' the streets — that's about 
all he's doin' 's far's I c'n find out." 

" Do you think," said I, " that Washington's 




A \ AL1.lv I'UKUE i'OOTI'ATH 

The ruinous buildings are the former homes of the operatives who worked in the 
deserted village mills 



Midwinter in Valley Forge 19 

soldiers had as hard a time here as we read they 
did ? " 
A3 " Yes," replied Uncle Buxton, decidedly, " I do. 
There's a colored woman lives in Philadelphia, and 
she's a hundred and thirty years old, and when she was 
a girl she was owned out near here by a family named 
Huston, and the soldiers was so bad off Mr. Huston 
used to go round gathering up stuff to give 'em; and 
the colored woman — she was a little girl then — went 
up to the camp with him sometimes, and she says the 
soldiers' shoes was all worn out, and she could track 
'em around on the snow by the blood from their feet. 
My grandfather was with the Vermont troops, and I've 
heard him tell, too, how things was, many a time. He 
said one cold spell Washington appinted a dress parade, 
and he asked the soldiers to all put on their best 
clothes and look just the finest they could. They did 
it, and then he had all them picked out that was com- 
fortable dressed and set 'em to work choppin' wood. 
The rest he had stay in their huts to keep warm. If 
people was to go through the hardships o' that winter 
now, they'd all die. They ain't got the spunk they had 
then — nowhere near ! " 

On one other point I asked enlightenment. I had 
failed to find what was known as the Washington 
spring, though I had searched for it again and again. 

" It's close by the place where the old forge stood," 
explained Uncle Buxton, " in a bar'l right by the side 
o' the road," and he gave minute directions. 



20 New England and its Neighbors 

I renewed my search the next day, and was rewarded 
by finding a few rotten staves around a hole in the 
gutter, full of leaves and rubbish, and not a drop of 
water. The natives, to whom I afterward mentioned 
these conditions, apologized for the spring by saying 
they had never known it to go dry before. Its claim 
to be the " Washington " spring does not seem to be 
very valid. The same claim is made for nearly all the 
springs in the Valley, including two or three the rail- 
road has wiped out. But surely Washington would 
not have depended on this spring a half-mile distant 
from headquarters when there were plenty nearer. 

The old Potts house, in which Washington made 
his home, is a square, good-sized stone building, two 
and a half stories high. A public association has it in 
charge, and preserves it as nearly as may be in its 
Revolutionary aspect. Its most pleasing outward 
feature is the great front door, divided horizontally in 
halves, after the manner common in colonial days, and 
shadowed by a picturesque porch roof that pokes out 
from the wall above. The windows are guarded by 
solid wooden shutters, and the glass in their tiny panes 
is only semi-transparent, and distorts with its twists and 
curls whatever is seen through it. 

The rooms within have their ancient open fireplaces 
and white, wooden wainscoting, and contain a variety 
of old-time relics, yet there is no touch of life, and the 
house has the barren look of a museum. This is the 



Midwinter in Valley Forge 



21 




The Entrance to the Headquarters Mansion 

more pronounced because of certain barriers it has been 
necessary to put up to restrain the vandalism of the 
sightseers. Even the great kitchen fireplace has to be 
protected. It was kept open until it had gradually 



22 New England and its Neighbors 

lost every piece of ironware it contained, and then, 
when a new set of old furnishings was presented, a 
wire screen was run across the front. 

The visitors treat the place as their prey to a sur- 
prising degree. Frequently they attempt to avoid 
paying the ten-cent admission fee. At the rear are 
spacious grounds of lawn and shade trees, the whole 
surrounded by a weatherworn picket fence. Over this 
fence comes many a pilgrim, but sometimes these inter- 
lopers get their just deserts, as, for example, a party of 
eight young women who scaled the palings one day 
when they thought the keeper was at dinner. He 
suddenly confronted them, much to their consternation, 
and in spite of their pleadings, made them all clamber 
over the fence again and come around to the gate. 

One very interesting portion of the house is a low 
log annex which reproduces a like structure erected by 
Washington for a dining-room. In its floor is a trap- 
door, and a steep flight of steps leads down to an 
arched passage and room underground. The house 
was built when the Indians were still feared, and this 
retreat was to serve as a refuge in case the house- 
dwellers were hard pressed. A tunnel originally gave 
connection with the near river, whence escape could be 
made by boat. 

Many schemes are broached for improving Valley 
Forge as a Revolutionary shrine, some good, but others 
of doubtful wisdom. The danger is of making it a 



Midwinter in Valley Forge 



23 



great show place ; for, laid out as a park and adorned 
with ostentatious monuments, its tinge of wildness 
would be destroyed, and it would wholly lose its charm 
and all flavor of the old war days when it was a refuge 
for the feeble and tattered Continental army. 




The House which was Washington's Headquarters 



II 



WHEN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS ARE WHITE 




T 



,HE southern 

half of New 
England was 
bare and brown ; but 
as I went northward I 
began to see remnants 
of drifts, and there 
were upper hillslopes 
with a northern ex- 
posure that were quite 
white. By the time 
I reached the moun- 
tains snow was omni- 
present, the roads were 
deep-buried, and trav- 
elling was done on 
A Woodland Teamster runners. My train 

carried me many miles up the tortuous valleys, and 
the aspect of the region became less and less inviting 
the longer the journey continued. The little farms 

24 



When the White Mountains are White 25 

appeared unthrifty, and the frequent, great vacant 
hotels only accented the desolation. 

I stopped at a village I will call Maple Glen. Like 
most of the hamlets of the district it consisted of a 
small group of houses around the railway station, with 
scattered farmhouses on the roads leading away from 
this nucleus. It looked lost or misplaced in the white 
world of frost with which it was enveloped. One 
doubted if it would thaw out in all summer. Many of 
the dwellings were meagre little affairs with a few 
pinched sheds about them. These were the homes 
of the unenergetic or shiftless. Their dreariness was 
not due to the poverty of the region and its remote- 
ness from markets, for signs were not lacking that 
some degree of prosperity was within the reach of 
all. A portion of the inhabitants grasped it, as was 
evidenced by buildings repaired and modernized and 
made pleasing to the owner's eyes by the application 
of paint in the striking colors that are at present fash- 
ionable. The hotels furnish excellent markets during 
the summer for eggs, poultry, milk, and early vege- 
tables, and considerable work is to be had at the 
sawmills which abound along all the streams, while in 
winter good wages can be earned chopping and teaming 
on the mountains. 

I looked about the village and then went into the 
station to warm up by the fire. Several men were 
lounging about there, and two or three others entered 



i6 New England and its Neighbors 

soon afterward. One of the latter was an old-fashioned 
Yankee. He shook hands cordially with an elderly 
man who seemed to be a particular friend, and said, 
" Haow dew yeow pan aout tewday ? " 

His pronunciation was not a fair sample, however, of 
the conversation I heard in the mountains. On the 
whole the people used surprisingly good English, and 
the nasal twang supposed to be characteristic of rustic 
New Englanders was seldom very marked. 

In a corner of the station waiting-room stood a crate 
of oranges. It had come by express for the local store- 
keeper. One of the men in the room presently called 
attention to it and told how fond he was of oranges 
and named just the length of time it would take him 
to devour a dozen of them. Another man said there 
wasn't enough taste to oranges to suit him, but he could 
eat lemons right down. This led a third man to relate 
that while he didn't have any great hankering for either 
oranges or lemons, he could despatch sixteen bananas 
without stopping to breathe. Then a fourth epicure 
declared nothing suited him as well as peanuts. " I 
golly!" he exclaimed, " I c'n walk from here to Lit- 
tleton, and that's ten miles, and eat peanuts all the 
way." 

What other gastronomic revelations might have been 
made I cannot say, for just then we were all attracted to 
the windows by a commotion outside. Two drunken 
fellows were walking along the road, jarring against each 





^^"T^ 






* * 






••%- 




w-imm, 



«*s 



A Load of Logs on a Forest Roadway 



When the White Mountains are White 27 

other and gesticulating and shouting. The older of the 
two, who looked to be about twenty-five, was Joe But- 
ton, so the men in the station said, and added that he 
had married, some months before, Eliza Hicks, a girl 
of thirteen ; yet the match was on the whole perhaps 
a good thing for her, it was argued, as her parents were 
dead and there was no one to take care of her. The 
couple were reported to get along well together in spite 
of her youth and his drunkenness. " But my daughter 
used to go to school with her," commented the man 
standing next me, " and she says Eliza puts on terrible 
airs over her and the other girls now, because she's 
married and they ain't. The girls pretend not to care, 
but I guess they feel it some." 

Evening was approaching and I inquired where I 
could get lodging for the night. My only chance, I 
was told, was at a boarding-house a little way up the 
track. This boarding-house proved to be a small yel- 
low dwelling neighboring a sawmill. It was kept by a 
stout, shrewd-looking Frenchwoman. She had only two 
or three boarders just then, for the mill was not running, 
and I was welcome to stay if I chose. The house was 
very plainly and rudely furnished, but was clean and 
orderly. I sat down in the kitchen. In a chair near 
me was a large framed portrait that had apparently just 
been unwrapped. The woman said it was a crayon 
enlargement of her mother, and she thought it was very 
good, but she would never get another. "It is too 



28 New England and its Neighbors 

much troubles. The man he comes here long time 
ago and he say he make portrait my mother free if I 
buy the frame — the portrait, it cost nothings. I say 
I will take the portrait for nothings and never mind 
the frame, but he say he not do business that way. So 
I pick a frame and he say he want cash. I say how I 
know you ever be here another time. I pay you when 
you the picture brings. But he tell it large expense for 
the very fine work he do and he must have moneys. 
I say then I will pay him two dollars and no more, 
and he say very well. So I have only but a ten-dollar 
bill and I ask him can he change it and he say he can. 
But when he get it he take out the full price and I 
cannot make him do different. He say it is the price 
only of the frame anyway and a great bargains. I pay 
four dollars eighty-five for that frame, but I have see 
just as big a frame at Lancaster in a store for dollar 
twenty-nine, and my sister's husband he get portrait 
like this made large thrown in with a suit clothes. It 
not so great bargain, I think. 

" Well, that agent man, he get my money and it be 
long time until I think I never see him no more, but 
to-day he come, and he say they put some extra works 
on the picture and express, so I have to pay one ninety 
more. But I say I never order no extras, and they 
bring themselves the picture, so there be no express, 
and I have pay all I will. So we have some talks, and 
he goes away. Oh, we have many pedlers comin' along 



When the White Mountains are White 29 

here all the times, and tramps too. Some of the tramps 
make me afraid. I always give them to eat; but if 
they looks bad or like they was drunk, I keeps shut 
the door and put somethings in paper, and opens the 
door only enough to hand it out. One Sunday, a 
big fat. tramp came. All the mans was in the house 
— my boarders — fifteen mans — and I was not 
scare that time. It was mos' dinner, and I say, 'You 
have to wait. If there anythings left I give you, but 
I got only jus' 'bout 'nough to fill my boarders.' He 
say he in considerable hurry, so he go on some other 
house. 

" I was most scare once that I was cleaning the but- 
tery and a tramp he came right into the buttery and 
say, ' I want some kind o' grub.' 

" And I say, ' Why you not knock ? ' 

" And he say he see nothing of nobody and the door 
open, so he walk in. I been churning and I have six 
poun' butter and have just put it on the shelf, and he 
say he guess he have a little o' that butter ; and I take 
a knife to cut, and he say he don't min' to have a 
whole cake — two poun'. Then he say he will have 
some tea and some sugar, and he take two breads and 
other things ; he look awful bad, and I so much fright 
I do all he say ; and he see a dinner pail all new and 
shiny, and he say, ' I take that, too ; that be kind o' 
handy for me.' But I tell him that belong to my 
boarder — 'I can't give you that'; and he say he 'bliged 



30 New England and its Neighbors 

to have it and he settle with the boarder when he 
come aroun' nex'. But I guess that be not very soon, 
and 1 not want to see him anyway ; he too terrible 
huggly." 

After supper when my landlady had finished doing 
the dishes and had sat down to sew, we heard a rat in 
the walls. That reminded her of a chopper who 
several years ago came to the house to board a few 
days after he got through the winter in the woods, 
" and he say he can make the rats go just where he 
please — send them any place he want ; and I say, 
* You a nice man — doin' such things ! ' 

" But he say, ' That's all right. It come very handy 
knowing to do that sometimes '; and I tell him I don't 
think much of man sending rats round. Well, he been 
long time in camp, and his clothes much dirty, and he 
want me to wash for him, and I say, * No, you hire 
some other people what does washing here.' But he 
was a Frenchman and didn't want to spend nothings — 
these French, they come from Canada, you know, and 
they brings everything they will need and don't want 
to spen' one cent. They want to take they money all 
back to Canada. Then he ask will I let him do the 
wash, and so I did. 

" When he ready to go home an' we settle, he don't 
want pay fifty cent a day, and he say, 'You wouldn't 
charge so much to a poor workingman,' and I say, ' I 
would. You heat enough for two mans together, and 



When the White Mountains are White 31 

I got have the price what I always have.' He want to 
pay twenty-five cents, but I won't take only my reg'lar 
price. 

" So he went away, and that same day a lot of railway 
mens come, and the house was full up ; and in the night 
we could not none of us sleep, the rats made so much 
noise. It was like any one move a trunk and throw a 
table on the floor — make jus' as much noise as that — 
and no one believe that was rats. The boarders, they 
want know the next morning if we hear that terrible 
noise — that scratch and bang — ancT they ask if we 
have ghosts. We never hear any rats before and we 
think that Frenchman, he go away mad and he mus' 
make the rats of all the peoples round here come 
down our place. We didn't have no cat. Every cat 
we use to have would get fits, and some day we find 
it turnin' round and grab on the wall and fall on the 
floor; and we think the cat might jump up on the 
cradle and scratch the baby, and we get frightened 
when the cat have fits, and we kill all the time. One 
of the boarder, he say he heard if you steal a cat, it 
keep well and never have that sickness same what all 
the before cats had. So I say, ' If you to steal a cat 
have a chance, I wish you to goodness would.' 

"He kind of keep lookout for cats that day and he 
found one on the sidewalk 'bout two mile from here; 
and the boarders say we fed those other cats too much 
meat, so we didn't any more, and we had that cat eight 



3.2 New England and its Neighbors 

or nine years and we got it yet. Soon as we got it 
that cat begun catch rats. It catch mos' as fifteen a 
day and it wouldn't never eat that rats once. It catch 
them all night and it not through catching the next 
morning, but it so tired then it would not kill, but 
bring them to the kitchen and leave them run round, 
and we have to take the broom. That make the 
boarders laugh. 

" The next fall that Frenchman come again. It 
mos' night, and he go to the barn, but I know him as 
he pass the window. My husband he milking and he 
not in the dark remember the man. If he have he 
take a stick and break his neck. The man he ask if 
he can get board, and my husband he say, ' My wife 
manage all that.' So the man come and ask me. He 
have a bag on his back and it been rain hard and he 
all wet. He say he can't go any farther ; and I say, 
' Tou the man what send the rats any place you want 
to. We got lots of rats that night you left. I guess 
you got you bag full of rats again. No, I not keep 
you.' 

"He never sayed anythings, but jus' walk away 
down the road." 

At the conclusion of this tale my landlady brought 
from the cellar some potatoes to pare for breakfast, 
and shortly her lodgers, who had been spending the 
evening at the village store, came in, and then it was 
bedtime for the household. 



_^jsam''S^jF9 ^r" f- 




:J' 



Work at a Logging Camp Landing 



When the White Mountains are White 23 

After an early meal the next morning 1 returned to 
the station, where I found a log train preparing to 
make Its dally journey back on a little branch road 
into the mountains. I decided to go with it and 
climbed Into the rude caboose at Its rear. There were 
about half a dozen other passengers. They visited and 
joked and added vigor and spice to their conversation 
by a good deal of casual swearing and some decidedly 
less excusable foulness. Our journey was up a wind- 
ing valley, all the way through the interminable and 
silent woods. Considerable snow had fallen during 
the night, but it lay light and undrifted and did not 
materially Impede our progress, though the steepness 
of the grade made the engine pant heavily. The 
flakes were still flying, and I could only see a little 
strip of whitened woodland on either side, and nothing 
at all of the mountains between which we were passing. 

I went as far as the train went, to the most remote 
of the logging camps — that of Jacques Freneau in 
the very heart of the woods. The camp was in a 
clearing beside the tracks. It consisted of a group of 
several buildings and an eighth of a mile of " landing" 
to which the logs were drawn fiom the forest, and 
from which they were rolled on to the platform cars. 
With the exception of one or two little shanties of 
boards the camp buildings were of logs made weather- 
proof by having their cracks chinked with moss. 
Their rude construction and the lonely winter forest 



34 New England and its Neighbors 

that formed their background made them seem exceed- 
ingly primitive and out-of-the-world. 

Freneau's choppers numbered about fifty. They 
were not making a clean sweep of the forest, but only 
taking out the spruces and pines, so that they left 
woodland behind, though a good deal thinned and 
devastated. To see the wilderness changed to the 
desert I would have to go up another valley where 
the " king contractor " of the mountains was at work. 
He employed seven hundred laborers and had built 
for them a whole village of houses laid out regularly 
in streets. The mountains when he finished were 
shorn of everything but brush, and invited the farther 
despoiling of fire and storm, so that it seemed doubtful 
if the forest glory of which the heights had been robbed 
could ever return. 

A well-worn road led back from Freneau's camp 
into the woods, and I followed it until I found the 
choppers. They were working in genuine forest that 
looked like the undisturbed handiwork of nature, and 
the trees grew crowded and stalwart. In the past these 
trees, when they waxed old, had added their forms to 
the ancestral mould among the rocks where they had 
stood. But now blows of axes and the grating of 
sharp-toothed saws were heard among them ; and those 
tiny creatures — those destroying mites known as men 
— were bringing them down untimely in youth and 
sturdy prime and dragging them away. 



When the White Mountains are White :^S 



The men sawed off the larger trees, but used their 
axes for the lesser ones. They usually chopped two 
to a tree, from opposite sides, and I noticed they could 
work equally well right or left handed. When a tree 
is about to fall, 
the choppers at its 
base shout to warn 
such of their com- 
panions as are near. 
At first the tree 
sways from the up- 
right very gently, 
and a little snow 
sifts down from its 
branches. Then 
its motion becomes 
more and more 
rapiduntil it crashes 
to earth. The im- 
pact causes a great 
cloud of powdered 
snow to burst up 
like smoke into 




The Choppers 



the air. This slowly drifts away, and by the time it 
dissipates, the men are working along the prostrate 
tree trunk, cutting off the branches. 

The woodsmen are portioned into crews of four — 
two choppers, a driver, and a sled-tender. It is the 



26 New England and its Neighbors 

duty of the last-named to help the driver load, and 
while the team is making a trip he is busy rolling logs 
to the road ready for his companion's return. The 
driver has a single broad sled truck. To this the logs 
are chained, allowing the rear ends to drag. These 
ends furrow very smooth and hard tracks, which you 
have to tread most gingerly or your feet fly from under 
you with astonishing suddenness. The loads go skim- 
ming along the decline at a trot, and in a few minutes 
are at the landing, where are men who unchain the logs 
and load them on the cars. 

A good deal of rivalry exists between the different 
crews, and they are always eager to compare records 
when these are made up in the evening. They work 
with especial ardor on Saturdays, for it is quite an 
honor to come out ahead in the week's total. The 
boss does all he can to cherish this rivalry, and some- 
times offers prizes — perhaps two plugs of tobacco to 
the crew which accomplishes most in a day, and one 
plug to each of the three crews which come next. 

The logs were marked and a record of them kept by 
two scalers. The scalers were the aristocracy of the 
camp, and had a separate cabin of their own. In it, 
besides the inevitable box stove and a big wood-box, 
each man had a board desk roughly nailed together 
and fastened to the wall, and an equally rude bed. 
Not much factory-made furniture is imported into the 
camps. The woodsmen get along with what they can 



When the White Mountains are White 37 

construct themselves. Instead of chairs they use 
benches, though the scalers had been inventive enough 
to supply a rocking-chair for their cabin. The main 




A Woodsman's Rocking-chair 

substance of this article was a flour barrel with a por- 
tion of the staves sawed off and inserted for a seat. 
On the bottom were nailed a few short lengths of 
boards to form a platform, underneath which were fast- 
ened edgewise a couple of boards fashioned into rock- 
ers. I tried the chair and found it more comfortable 
than I would have imagined, though its makers apolo- 
gized for its lack of upholstering, and for certain nails 
that were apt to restrain you when you rose. 

The man who was chiefly responsible for this chair 
was a very ingenious sort of a Yankee. Among other 



38 New England and its Neighbors 

things he had whittled out a birch broom, and each 
winter he was in the habit of making with his jack- 
knife quite a number of slender toy barrels, about six 
inches high, which he filled with gum and sold — 
some of them to workers in the logging camp who 
wanted to send away a forest souvenir, some of them 
to chance visitors. The barrels were very neatly done 
in white poplar wood, and were marvels of patience. 

Camp visitors were usually either pedlers or people 
from the mountain villages who came on some sort of 
business. Possibly on a Sunday a priest or a Protes- 
tant home missionary might find his way to the camp and 
hold service, but none had been to Freneau's this winter, 
and the only manifestation of religion was the regular ap- 
pearance of salt codfish on Fridays. One of the most 
recent of the pedlers was a man who took orders for 
tailor-made suits. His prices ranged from thirteen to 
twenty-two dollars, and he did very well ; but a fellow 
with watches and jewellery was much more successful. 
In a single night he sold one hundred and seventy-five 
dollars' worth. The pedlers received payment in the 
form of orders on the boss, who deducted ten per cent 
for his share in the transaction. 

Nearly all the men in Freneau's camp were French 
from Canada. They cleared from fifty to one hundred 
dollars by their winter's work on wages varying from 
seventeen to thirty dollars a month, the sum depend- 
ing on the individual's ability and the work he did. 



When the White Mountains are White 29 

The men were all young, and they seldom came more 
than two or three seasons. The probability was they 
were struggling to pay for some little farm that cost 
about a hundred and fifty dollars, and when this was 
accomplished they stayed at home to take care of their 
property. There was rarely any loitering on the part 
of these Frenchmen after the labor of the four white 
months in the forest solitude was done. They started 
promptly northward with their earnings almost intact ; 
but the Irish and Scotch from Nova Scotia, who made 
up a considerable fraction of the mountain choppers, 
were apt to celebrate their release and affluence by a 
grand spree. 

In Freneau's stout log barn were twenty-six horses. 
He had no oxen. Indeed, the latter are scarcely ever 
brought into the mountains now. Some of the valley 
farmers have them and get out lumber from the wood- 
land borders with them ; but twenty years ago they 
were in common use everywhere, both in the forest and 
out. It was thought then that oxen could do rougher 
work than horses. The present view is that horses can 
be put in places where oxen cannot, and their superior 
intelligence and quickness make them accomplish 
decidedly more. The only oxen I learned of in the 
woods were two yoke in a camp a mile below. Their 
owner was an old-style farmer who was getting timber 
from his own land. He had a tremendous voice, and 
on a quiet day could be clearly heard by the men at 



40 



New England and its Neighbors 




A Mountain Ox-team 



Freneau's, shouting to his creatures, " Gee off there ! 
Whoa, back ! Whoa, hush ! Whoa, ho ! " etc. 

The power of his tones suggested a man hardly less 
bucolic than the creatures he was directing. I con- 
cluded I would go down to see him. During the 
winter he had employed several choppers, but these 
had now gone, and only he, and his wife who did the 
camp housekeeping in the little log cabin, and their 
son were left. When I approached the clearing I saw 
that father and son were engaged in loading a car, and 
were about to put on a long spruce. This was in 
a pile three or four rods up an incline from the land- 
ing, and they were considering whether it would go 



When the White Mountains are White 41 

where it ought if they simply let it roll. With 
very little trouble they could have set up stakes to 
stop it on the lower side of the landing, but they 
guessed it would go all right, and heaved it loose. 
Off it went, bumping along, and the men watched it 
with interest. One end gained on the other, and when 
it struck the car it only partially lodged on the load, 
and canted up with the small end down on the track. 
The men were inclined to blame each other for this 
outcome, but they soon fell to work again, got their 
yoke of oxen hitched on to the log, and after con- 
siderable trouble succeeded in properly adjusting it. 
Next they dragged a heavy beech out of the snow on 
the edge of the woods. It was rather short for the 
landing, and they were half minded to lay down some 
skids to make sure it should not go astray. But when 
they talked this over they guessed it wasn't necessary. 
" Seems to me it'll do," said the old man ; " only be 
careful ; yes, be darn careful ! " They edged the log 
along, and so far as I could judge they were " darn 
careful," and yet at the last moment down went one 
end between the car and the landing. Luckily the 
other end caught up above. Even so it was a bad 
predicament, and the men hitched on the oxen with 
the remark that if one yoke couldn't draw the log out 
they would bring their second yoke from the barn and 
see what both together could do. But a single yoke 
sufficed, though not without a great deal of exertion on 



42 New England and its Neighbors 

the part of men and beasts, and a niehmcholy waste 
of time. There was little pleasure in watching such 
awkward work, and 1 soon retraced my steps to 
Freneau's, where things were not done bv haphazard 
guesswork. 

Evening was now approaching, and I went into the 
lodging-house. The entrance opened on a low, dark 
apartment which was called the bar-room, though there 
was no bar, and no liquors were sold in the camp. Its 
correspondence to its name lav in its being the men's 
loafing-place when they were not at work. In one 
corner was a long sink, with a barrel close by into 
which excellent water flowed trom a spring up the hill. 
A cracked box-stove stood in the centre of the room, 
and there was a big grindstone near a window, and 
several rude benches against the walls. The dining 
room adjoined. It was nearlv filled by tour long 
tables. Separated from it by a slight partition was the 
office of the camp, serving also as a storeroom and 
retail shop — a small, narrow room with a box nailed 
against the wall for a desk, and many shelves piled with 
gatherings of all kinds. Here were axes, chains, rope, 
parts of harness, and a supply of old periodicals pre- 
sented by some religious society. Then there were 
socks, mittens, overalls, and undershirts for sale, and, 
in the way of luxuries, plug tobacco, of which the men 
consumed great quantities. 

When it began to grow dark the workers came 



When the White Mountains are White 43 



trooping in to supper, and, that disposed of, adjourned 
to the bar-room to spend the evening lounging and 
smoking. They enjoyed the heat and the relaxation, 
and I suppose did not mind the gloom, only slightly 
mitigated by a single lamp and stray gleams from the 
cracks of the stove. At nine we all went upstairs to the 
loft where we were 
to sleep. This loft 
was even more 
barnlike than the 
rest of the house. 
On the floor around 
the room borders 
was a row of bunks, 
and above these 
was another row, 
all made of boards 
and furnished with 
straw mattresses 
and coarse blankets. 
The men did not 
disrobe much, save 
to take off" their 
jackets and shoes, 
and soon the dim ^" ^^e Sleeping Apartment 

lamp which had furnished us with light was extinguished 
and the scattering talk lapsed into silence. Yet there 
would still be an occasional cough, or some one would 




44 New England and its Neighbors 

rise on his elbow to spit on the floor. These mani- 
festations of wakefulness also ceased presently, and no 
sound could be heard save the heavy breathing of the 
sleepers. 1 did not drop off as readily as the others ; 
for the situation was new to me, and the bed was too 
densely saturated with stale tobacco fumes that had 
been accumulating all winter ; and, besides, I had the 
fancy I might be attacked by crawlers. My concern 
on this score proved needless, and when I finally slept 
I was awakened only once. That was about midnight. 
One of the men was singing in his sleep, and he went 
leisurely and melodiously through a long ballad in 
French. 

Morning was welcome, and I was up with the first 
risers and went down to the kitchen — a commodious 
lean-to immediately beyond the dining room. The 
work there was done by a little old German and his 
wife assisted by a boy. Around the walls were shelves 
and broad counters, and everywhere were boxes and 
barrels of supplies, piles of tin tableware, pots and pans, 
and tubs and kettles ; and a trap-door in the floor gave 
access to an excavation in which were stored potatoes. 
The cooking was done on a great flat stove. 

During the winter the fifty men consumed a barrel 
of flour each, sixty bushels of beans, two hundred 
bushels of potatoes, seven hundred pounds of oleo- 
margarine, one hundred pounds of tea, and a vast 
amount of meat and fish. There was almost no varia- 



When the White Mountains are White 45 

tion in the daily fare, except that on Friday salt codfish 
was substituted for meat. Bread, butter, tea, and mo- 
lasses appeared on the table at every meal. The tea 
was not very strong, but it was unlimited in quantity, 
and it was kept long enough on the stove to acquire 
plenty of color. It was served without milk or sugar. 
Sugar was formerly supplied, but the men were waste- 
ful, put in half a dozen spoonfuls or more and left the 
bottom of their cups covered with half-dissolved crystals 
after they had drank the tea. They seemed to have 
a particular fondness for molasses, and hardly a man 
failed, three times a day, to pour on his tin plate a 
generous puddle in which he proceeded to sop his 
bread. 

Beans and brown bread were the breakfast staples, 
but these as served at Freneau's were not considered 
first-class, for they were baked in the stove oven. 
Most camps have a bean-hole — an excavation three 
or four feet deep in the ground just outside the log 
dwelling. A fire is built in it, and when the wood is 
reduced to a great heap of coals the bean-pot is put in 
with some tins of brown bread on top. Then the pot 
is covered with coals, and ashes and earth are heaped on. 
It is left thus through the night, to be exhumed the 
following morning, and the woodsmen all agree that 
bean-hole beans are far superior to the oven product. 

At noon Freneau's men had potatoes and boiled 
meat. The meat was usually beef, but occasionally 



46 



New England and its Neighbors 



was fresh pork. For supper the meat and potatoes were 
served again, this time chopped into lumps and mixed 

together. Dough- 
nuts appeared on 
the table morning 
and noon, and 
cookies at night. 
I was told that 
this fare as com- 
pared with what 
the Canadian 
French had at 
home was para- 
dise ; but it was 
a good deal hum- 
bler than that in 
the average of the 
camps, and sto- 
ries were related 
of Yankee camps 
"1 where they had 
steaks and ham, 
cake, bread, and 
raisin pudding, 

and two or three 

A Corner of the Camp Kitchen i • j r 

^ kmas or pie. 

I wondered that those two old people in Freneau's 

kitchen could care for their large household. They 




When the White Mountains are White 47 

looked to be about seventy years of age. Both were 
thin and gray, the man crooked and stooping, the 
woman wrinkled but upright. They worked hard and 
made long days. 

" I gets up at three o'clock every morning from dot 
bed," said the man, pointing to a rude couch in a far 
corner, " and I have on my underclothes and nightcap, 
and I don't stop not to put on nothings more but my 
rubber boots, and then I makes to start the fires here 
and in the next room and in the bar-room, and about 
in twenty minutes I get them all roar. 

" Then my wife she get up, and we begin get 
breakfast. The boy what is suppose to help, we not 
see him until one-two hour later. He like an old man 
— he so careful of hisself He would be kill to get up 
like me. We have the breakfast at half-past five, but 
these las' few week it is not so soon, for the men they 
get not up when I rings the bell. They work like a 
tiger when they come at the begin of winter, but now 
they have got kind o' balky and will not to hurry. 

" These French, they are as more like cattle as any- 
thing I have seen. All they have not is the horns. 
They eat like cattle, and sleep like cattle, and they 
have not care nothings about your house if it is clean 
or not. They spittin' everywhere — on the floor — 
everywhere. An American man, he take off the stove- 
cover and spit in, or he go outside. But not so the 
French. Look, too, the way they eat. At the family 



48 New England and its Neighbors 

table, which is what I call to make high tone of it 
same like hotel — dot where is set the boss and the 
teamsters who mos'ly not from Canada, — and they 
eat jus' one-quarter what do the others. They have 
the same kind, but they take not so much. How 
much bread you think I makes every day, hey? It is 
so much as fifty loaves ! 

" All the time these French, they feelin' good. The 
least little thing they will laugh, and so hearty ! — it 
seem to them so awful funny. They are jus' like 
colored people, I make it — so easy to please as a 
child. But they do not play much — only checkers 
sometimes, and one more game, which you lean over 
mit your face in your hat and put your hand flat out 
behind you. The others they all stand round, and 
some one he slaps your hand, and you jump quick mit 
your eyes out of your hat, and try if you can see who 
it was. If you say right, dot one takes your place. 
They play dot game much and for long time and 
laugh and think it more funny as anything in the 
world. Other camps they play card ; but Mr. Fre- 
neau do not allow card for because they gamble their 
money and perhaps they fight. Last year some they 
play in the blacksmith shop of our camp, and the boss 
he found about it and turn them off. 

" On Sundays we do not our breakfast eat until 
eight, and the men that day lie much in their bunks, 
and some read papers. But the half, they can- 




A Scaler 



When the White Mountains are White 49 

not read at all, they are so ignorant ; and so one 
man he may read aloud to a good many. They mend 
their clothings on Sunday, and perhaps they wash clean 
their underwears and hang them to dry, and they might 
whittle out some axe-helve. It is now coming spring, 
and we begin have warm Sundays, and the men they go 
out and run to chase themselves and crow like a rooster 
and blat like a sheep and all sort of noise, and see 
which the strongest man at rolling logs. 

" You might thinks we be lonesome here, but we 
have to keep too busy for dot. I have intend, though, 
not to come into the woods again another time. It 
is too much cold. This kitchen, it is like one ice- 
house. There are cracks so many the heat all go out. 
We had one night thirty-four below zero, and my 
bread it all froze and had to be thaw before I could 
get a knife into it. Dot most scare me. We tries to 
be neat, and we wants to mop the floor often, but when 
it cold the water freeze right on the boards. Oh, you 
can't think there is no fun sometimes. 

" The taters what we use now have got freeze, too, 
and most all the days until this week the windows are 
frost all over so thick we cannot look out, and I have 
to fight and fight to get the wood dot we burn. I 
want not to meddle mit anythings not my business, 
but how we can cook if we have not the wood.'' It 
is the dry wood only we use from trees dot are dead 
and stand up — and you be surprise the wood in them 



50 New England and its Neighbors 

so dry as one bone. If they fall they get full of wet in 
no times. It kind of small work chop wood for stoves, 
and the men not like to spend the time to bother. I 
wish not to fight, but it is hard not to do dot mit some 
beoples. You have keep shut your eyes if you don't 
want to have troubles mit them. That wood makes me 
much worry and extra works." 

The cook while he talked did not pause in his labor 
save now and then to cast his eyes toward me at the 
more important points and make sure that I under- 
stood. But now he stopped both his remarks and his 
work to peer out a pane of glass in the low back door. 
" Did you never see this bird ? " he asked at length. 

I went to the window, and there was a woodpecker 
digging away at a haunch of beef that lay over a barrel 
outside. Later I inquired of one of the scalers about 
the wild creatures of the winter woods, and he mentioned 
seeing bluejays, chickadees, and flocks of snow-buntings. 
Red squirrels were plentiful around the camp and made 
away with a good deal of corn from the storehouse. 
Often he came across fox and rabbit tracks on the 
snow, and some of the men had seen a deer. 

Nearly all the time I was in the logging camp it 
snowed, though never with much vigor, and there 
were spells when the storm would cease and the 
clouds lift, disclosing the mountains rising in serene 
majesty all around. I could as easily have believed 
their ghostly heights were dreams as realities, so un- 



When the White Mountains are White 51 

expectedly did they loom forth from the void, and so 
strangely transformed and unsubstantial did they appear 
with the snow delicately frosting their tree-clad slopes to 
the remotest peak. But these wider outlooks were as 
fleeting as they were enchanting, and soon the veil of 
falling flakes would droop over the crystal summits, and 
the world would quickly dwindle to a little patch of 
snowbound forest close about. This latter view was 
the most characteristic one as far as my experience is 
concerned, and it is this vision which remains with me 
most vividly — a fragmentary vignette of the great white 
woods, pure and unsullied beyond expression. 




A Logging-camp Dwelling 



Ill 



A RUIN BESIDE LAKE CHAMPLAIN 



w 



HAT river is 
that? " asked the 
man occupying 
the seat in front of me as our 
train began to skirt the shores 
of a body of water about sev- 
enty-five miles north of Al- 
bany. 

He put the question to 
the conductor who responded, 
" That's Lake Champlain." 

" You don't say so ! Why, 
I could throw across it ! I 
had no idea it was so narrow," 
and the man seemed disap- 
pointed as well as surprised. 

He would have found a 
good deal of difficulty in 
throwing across, yet the lake really is extremely attenu- 
ated at the south end, and slenderness is a characteristic 

52 




Considering his Neighbor's 
Fields 



A Ruin beside Lake Champlain ^^ 

even to its outlet. On a clear day, especially, the 
opposite shore is so distinct and apparently near that 
it requires an effort to remember you are looking on a 
lake and not the broad channel of a stream. When 
the distance is veiled in summer haze or with falling 
rain this effect is less marked, the other shore seems 
farther removed, and the charm of the lake is greatly 
enhanced. 

The aspect of the surrounding country is gentle and 
pastoral. There are occasional wooded ridges, and 
there are mountains, blue and dreamy along the hori- 
zon, that are as calmly beautiful as the " Delectable 
Mountains" of John Bunyan's " Pilgrim's Progress"; 
but the landscape immediately adjoining the lake is 
nearly always one of fertile and well-cultivated farm 
fields. Villages and towns are frequent, most of them 
wholly rural, with white houses among elm, maple, and 
apple trees, and a church spire or two rising above the 
foliage. 

The region is not an industrial centre. It is off the 
main thoroughfares of trade, and, so far as I could judge, 
even the little manufacturing it had was on the wane. 
For instance, at Crown Point were iron-works run 
vmtil recently ; but now the furnaces are cold, and the 
smoke no longer drifts from the tall chimneys, and the 
huddled, brown-painted homes of the operatives in 
regular streets with their distressing alikeness and bar- 
renness of surroundings are all vacant. 



54 



New England and its Neighbors 



" It ain't easy to make small plants pay nowadays," 
explained a native, " and this one busted up and went 
to pieces last year." 

But if things looked rather dismal around the Crown 
Point iron-works by the lakeside, the town up the hill 
seemed to be unaffected by the disaster — a simple. 




In Crown Point Village 

pleasant country place, the abode of farmers and a few 
shopkeepers. It had a delightfully sleepy, easy-going 
air as I saw it one spring day. A man on his way to the 
fields was driving two horses attached to a plough through 
the street, a carriage was hitched in front of a store 
while the owner was inside doing some trading, and 
on the door-sill of another store sat two men visiting. 



A Ruin beside Lake Champlain 55 

I rambled on past the common with its flagstafFand its 
soldiers' monument of the usual type — a column bear- 
ing the names of several of the most important battles 
of the Rebellion with a standing soldier on top, — and 
I kept on until I left the central village. The houses 
became scattering, and there were rough hollows given 
up to pasturage, and, athwart the west, were forest-clad 
mountains. That it was spring with summer coming 
was very apparent from the work going forward about 
the homes — woodpiles being wheeled in from the 
yards to the sheds, the scratching together and setting 
on fire heaps of brush and rubbish, and the sowing and 
planting in the gardens. When a garden was near the 
road it always attracted the interest of passers, and if a 
man going along on foot found his neighbor at work 
with his hoe in the garden plot, he was apt to lean over 
the fence and get and give some agricultural advice, 
and at the same time swap the latest items of local 
news. 

On my way back to the town I encountered a small 
boy, slopping about the borders of a marshy roadside 
pool, looking for frogs. He had captured two of the 
creatures and was carrying them in one hand by 
the hind legs. The boy was perfectly oblivious of 
the fact that the frogs had feeling. Their distress was 
naught to him. He had no purpose in catching them 
beyond idle curiosity — the gratification of some sav- 
age aboriginal instinct. When I produced a penny, 



^6 New England and its Neighbors 

he wilHngly set the frogs free and started off in a bee- 
line for the nearest candy store. 

A man not far away, repairing a zigzag rail fence, 
had paused in the process of driving in a stake to 
watch the frog transaction. He was a stubby, elderly 
man, with a brush of gray whiskers under his chin. 

" There's plenty of them creeturs this year," he 
said, as the boy disappeared ; " I got a pond near my 
house and the frogs holler so nights in that air pond, 
I can't hardly sleep. Last Sunday, I believe it was, 1 
got up out o' bed about 'leven o'clock and went down 
and flung some stones at 'em. They stopped then, 
but they was all goin' it bad as ever by the time I got 
back to the house." 

" How many cows do you keep in this pasture of 
yours ? " I inquired, changing the subject. 

" Thirteen." 

" Isn't that an unlucky number ? " 

" Maybe 'tis, but I know I get more from those 
thirteen than some of my neighbors do from twice as 
many. I was born and raised on the other side of the 
lake. They know how to farm over there, and they're 
bringin' no end o' produce acrost every year that we 
had ought to raise ourselves. You see this 'ere lot 
up the hill here next to my pastur'. It belongs to 
the man that lives in that green and yellow house just 
beyond the church, and there ain't no better land in 
the state of New York, but he gets mighty slim crops 




Mending the Pasture Fence 



A Ruin beside Lake Champlain 57 

ofF'n it. I'd like to see a Vermont man farm that lot 
awhile. If you ain't never been around in the coun- 
try over the lake you'd better pay it a visit ; and there's 
old Fort Frederick, too, over there at Chimley Point, 
you'd like to see." 

But instead of visiting Vermont and Chimney Point 
1 went southward to Ticonderoga. I made a blunder- 
ing journey; for I learned, after going sadly astray, that 
if one would leave the train at the station nearest the 
ancient fortress, he must alight neither at Ticonderoga 
nor at Fort Ticonderoga, but at a place called Addison 
Junction. This last is not a town. It is not even a 
village. The habitations consist of a farm-house or two 
and several rusty little dweUings in which live workers 
on the railroad. 

I arrived in the late afternoon, and my first care was 
to find a place to stay over night. Close by the 
tracks, next the station, was a small house marked 
" Restaurant." The station-master assured me I would 
have no difficulty in getting lodging there, though the 
prospect of doing so seemed to me rather dismal, but 
he proved to be right. The restaurant part consisted 
of a single small room with a counter across the rear. 
A short glass case on the counter contained a display of 
cigars, and the wall behind was built up with shelves 
scantily set with bottles and a few boxes of plug tobacco. 
The house was kept by North of England people. They 
had come over twenty years before, but they still re- 



58 New England and its Neighbors 

tained their peculiar home accent, said " Ay " instead 
of " Yes," and constantly addressed me as " Sir" ; while 
the hired girl, after the English fashion, called the land- 
lady " the Missus." The latter was setting the supper 
table when I came in, and soon informed me the meal 
was ready. 

After I had eaten, as it was too late to hunt up the 
old fortress, I loitered down to a ferry not far from my 
stopping-place. The ferryman was doing some tinker- 
ing on shore, and the boat was fastened for the night. 
It was a flat-bottomed scow that would carry comfort- 
ably about three teams. The power used was steam, 
but many Champlain ferry-boats employ sails instead, 
thus obliging whoever runs one of the craft to coax 
it along with oars, or by poling, when the wind is 
light. 

All through the winter the lake is frozen over, and 
the ice makes an excellent bridge. " You can drive 
anywhere on it," said the ferryman, " but mostly they 
only go from shore to shore, unless they fix up a track 
for a hoss race." 

"Are there ever any accidents ? " I inquired. 

" Well, yes, folks are apt to get careless, and they 
keep goin' after the ice begins to rot in the spring. The 
last man that broke through here was a Dutchman by the 
name of Schwillbug or something of that sort. He was 
a pedler and he had a fine hoss, and a cart that was 
all painted up slick as you please. Over on the other 




A Lake Champlain Ferry 



A Ruin beside Lake Champlain 59 

side there seems to be a little current at the end of the 
ferry wharf, and we mostly don't go off the ice right 
on to the wharf but take a turn out around it. We 
told the Dutchman how this was, but he knew better 
and said there was no danger whatever. So he drove 
straight for the wharf and in he went. He got 
out himself, but he lost his cart and he lost his 
hoss." 

The sun had set while I lingered at the ferry. Now 
in the deepening dusk I walked far up over a western 
hill, at first through the woods and then between 
pastures and occasional cultivated fields. I went on 
till from the brow of a hill I overlooked a low valley, 
a-twinkle with the cheerful lights of a town. A whip- 
poorwill was calling from a woodland hollow, and 
numerous blundering beetles were rising from the grass 
and buzzing amid the new leafage of the trees. 

Here and there were houses on the upland, and as 
I went back I noted them more particularly. They 
were little, clapboarded, unpainted cabins that bore a 
close resemblance to the negro hut of the South. Some 
of them were scarcely large enough to contain one 
decent-sized room, but I suppose they usually had at 
least a kitchen, a bedroom and, overhead, a low cham- 
ber. Most of the dwellings had an accompaniment 
of sheds and a small barn, and the premises were strewn 
with litter and unsheltered tools and vehicles. Under 
the eaves of each house was a water-barrel and, close 



6o New England and its Neighbors 

by, a nondescript and meagre pile of wood still uncut. 
Apparently the inmates never got a supply of stove 
wood ready ahead, but daily used axe and saw when 
necessity compelled. The hamlet was a characteristic 
community of poor whites — a gathering of the shiftless, 
the unenergetic and unambitious, and to some extent 
of the vicious. I inquired later about these people, 
questioning if there was not a prospect of their better- 
ing themselves and whether their poverty was a 
necessity. 

" They live along from year to year just about the 
same," was the reply, " and I can't say as they improve 
any. They could get ahead if they was a min' to. But 
what some folks don't spend on eatables they spend on 
drinkables, and that's the whole secret ot it." 

At my lodging-place, when I returned, "Kit" the 
hired girl was putting on her things preparatory to 
going to a neighbor's to watch with a sick woman for 
the night. " She's got the typhoid," Kit explained, 
" and the Missus and me and quite a number of 
women around here go in and help what we can. 
Land's sake ! I do' know what they'd do if we 
didn't, though they've got the handiest little girl there 
I ever see. She's only ten, poor little soul, but she's 
a worker, and she can cook as well as a grown person. 
Her father's a brakeman on the railroad, and he says 
since his wife's been sick he's never come home but 
that girl of hisn's had the victuals ready right on time. 



A Ruin beside Lake Champlain 



6i 



When she ain't nothing else to do she Hkes to sit and 
rock and read. She's a regular old grandma — that's 




Rhubarb 

what she is. There's six children and she's the oldest. 
She takes good care of the little shavers, specially the 



62 New England and its Neighbors 

baby. Yesterday I gave her an apple and 'stead of 
eating it herself she pared it and gave it to the baby. 
He was sitting on the floor with it when I come away 
and she said, ' You bet he'll keep a-lappin' that till 
he's lapped it all down.' Well, I must be goin' or that 
girl'll lock the door and go to bed." 

The next morning was fair and warm. The 
meadows were jubilant with bobolinks, and great num- 
bers of swallows that had homes in the lakeside banks 
were darting hither and thither. I made an early start 
and turned my footsteps toward the old fort. It was 
barely a quarter of a mile from the station in a direct 
line, but the route thither was by a devious farm road 
through the fields. This road was little used and was 
hardly more than a few wheel ruts cutting into the turf. 
It went through several bar-ways and two or three 
dooryards and ended at a pasture gate which was wired 
so securely I was compelled to clamber over. 

In the pasture a herd of ponies was feeding and they 
came nibbling toward me to investigate. But when 
they discovered that I was bound for the ancient forti- 
fications, they seemed to lose interest and left me to my 
fate. On the highest slope of the pasture I had seen 
from afar a group of ruins. The more prominent of 
them were the gray, ragged stone walls of what had 
been the officers' barracks. These were hardly massive 
or extensive enough to be exactly imposing, yet they 
looked satisfactorily historic and they gained much 



A Ruin beside Lake Champlain 6;^ 

from their striking situation. The land falls away to 
the north and west very gradually, but to the east and 
south it drops in steep bluffs and green-turfed declivi- 
ties to the lake, and the height commands the water- 
way most thoroughly. The crowning ridge of the 
pasture was upheaved in a chaos of stone walls, great 
ditches, and grass-grown banks, and there were lesser 
fortifications scattered over a considerable area neigh- 
boring:. The walls of some of the old barracks were 
yet fairly intact, and I could see what had been their 
original height and where had been the windows and 
the fireplaces ; but our climate is not kindly to ruins, 
and the stones are constantly dropping and the walls 
crumbling. It is a wild, neglected spot. The mullein 
grows stoutly here and there, and I found the mounds 
and ditches much overrun with clumps of thorn trees 
and cedars and by a thicket of little poplars with their 
leaves a-flutter in the breeze. 

The sole garrison of the place seemed to be a wood- 
chuck. He saw me coming while I was still at a con- 
siderable distance and hastened toward his hole in one 
of the earthworks. But his curiosity was greater than 
his discretion, and he would make a little run and then 
pause to learn what were my intentions. When he 
reached the mouth of his hole, he waited until I came 
within two rods of him. Then he dove down out of 
sight. I stood a few moments to see whether he had 
gone for good, and shortly he poked his nose out 



64 New England and its Neighbors 

again, and I am not sure but that he had his eyes on 
me all the time that I spent in the vicinity of his citadel. 

Few places on our continent excel Ticonderoga in 
historic attraction. Even the name is sonorous and 
heroic, and its capture by Ethan Allen is one of the 
best-remembered events of the Revolution. The 
victory was a bloodless one, yet the story has many 
picturesque accessories that stir patriotic enthusiasm. 
Western Massachusetts and Vermont were at that time 
sparsely settled, and the greater portion of them and of 
northern New York was an undisturbed wilderness. 
Roadways were few and it was customary for travellers 
going north and south in this district to take advan- 
tage of the natural highway furnished by the Hudson, 
Lakes George and Champlain, and the Richelieu River. 

To secure this route to themselves the French had 
long before pushed southward from Canada and built 
frequent blockhouses and other defences; and in 1735 
they erected Fort Carillon, or as it was afterward 
known. Fort Ticonderoga, the strongest fortress on 
American soil. So powerful was it that its existence 
caused not a little anxiety in England. An attempt 
was made by the English to capture it in 1758, but 
after repeated assaults and great losses the attacking 
force retreated utterly demoralized toward Albany. 
The next year another large force advanced on Carillon 
and the French blew up that and the rest of the forts 
along the lake and fell back to Canada. 



A Ruin beside Lake Champlain 



65 




Ticonderoga Ruins 

By the English the stronghold was rebuilt and its 
name changed to Ticonderoga, the Indian name of a 
neighboring waterfall. Because of the strength and 
importance of Ticonderoga's location, the Colonies at 
the beginning of the Revolution were naturally anxious 
to possess it. The initiative toward accomplishing this 
object was taken by several gentlemen in Connecticut, 
who got together secretly at Hartford, in April, 1775, 
and having found certain persons willing to engage in 
the enterprise, furnished them with funds to buy sup- 
plies and defray the other expenses that might be 
incurred. These persons set off immediately for 
Bennington, Vermont, with the intention of getting 



66 New England and its Neighbors 

Colonel Ethan Allen to join in the undertaking and 
help raise an adequate force for the capture of the fort. 
On the way their numbers grew to about sixty, and 
a hundred more men were soon added from the hills 
of the New Hampshire Grants, as Vermont was then 
called. A vote was then taken, to determine who 
should be the leader, and the honor was awarded to 
Colonel Allen. 

Meanwhile, a committee in eastern Massachusetts, 
unaware of the action of the Connecticut conclave, 
appointed Benedict Arnold, who was then at Cam- 
bridge, " commander-in-chief " over a body of men not 
exceeding four hundred which he was directed to enlist, 
and with them to reduce the fort at Ticonderoga. To 
carry this commission into effect Arnold promptly pro- 
ceeded to the western part of the state, where he learned, 
much to his chagrin, that his plan had been forestalled. 
He then hastened with a single attendant to join the 
little band in Vermont, and on the 8th of May over- 
took the Green Mountain Boys just as they had com- 
pleted their preparations and were about to set forth. 
But Arnold had no sooner arrived than he asserted the 
right to take command of the entire expedition, alleging 
that this was his due by virtue of his commission from 
the Massachusetts committee. To this high-handed 
claim the rank and file of the troop strenuously ob- 
jected. They chose to go under their own officers or 
not at all, and were for " clubbing their muskets and 



A Ruin beside Lake Champlain 67 

marching home." Indeed, such a mutiny arose that 
the whole design was ahnost frustrated. But the matter 
was finally settled, and Arnold was to some extent pla- 
cated by being assigned an honorary place and allowed 
to move at the head of the column on Colonel Allen's 
left. 

The Americans by the night of the 9th had con- 
trived to cross the lake, and lay near the fort waiting 
for daybreak. With the first hint of morning light 
Allen led his followers to the entrance of the fort. 
The gate was shut, but the wicket was open, and 
though the sentry snapped his fusee, before the alarm 
he gave could summon his comrades, the Americans 
had dashed into the fort and raised the Indian war- 
whoop. Little resistance was offered. The few 
soldiers on guard, after a shot or two, threw down 
their arms, and Allen strode to the quarters of Dela- 
place, the commandant. As he reached the door 
Delaplace appeared in his night garments and listened 
in amazement to the demand for the surrender of the 
fort. 

" By what authority ? " asked the startled Briton. 

" In the name of the great Jehovah and the Conti- 
nental Congress," was Allen's reply. 

The assault was entirely unexpected, the surprise 
was complete, and the valuable fortress, with its large 
equipment of cannon and ammunition, fell into the 
hands of the Americans at a very opportune time. 



68 New England and its Neighbors 

Within the next two years they made Ticonderoga a 
stronghold that they thought well-nigh impregnable. 
They threw up numerous outlying defences, erected 
Fort Independence on the bluffs across the lake and 
connected the two forts with a sunken bridge. One 
of the great logs of this bridge was not long ago 
detached and brought to the shore, and an old farmer 
with whom I talked told me he had a portion of it at 
his house. 

" Some say wood in the water'll rot," said he, " but 
it won't. You keep wood In the water all the time, or 
you keep it perfectly dry all the time, and it'll last for- 
ever. It's wet and dry raises the mischief. This log 
that they pulled up had lain there and never seen the 
air in more than a hundred years, and it was as sound 
as a Spanish milled dollar." 

In spite of all the Americans did in strengthening 
Ticonderoga, it failed them at a most critical time ; for 
when Burgoyne reached it on his famous invasion, they 
were obliged to ingloriously abandon their elaborately 
prepared defences without a shot. To the southwest, 
on the other side of Ticonderoga Creek, or "Ti Crick," 
as it is called locally, rise the steep wooded sides of 
Mt. Defiance. The Americans had fancied the 
height was one which could not be scaled with cannon, 
and when the British accomplished this, Ticonderoga 
was at their mercy, and the Americans could do nothing 
but get out. 



A Ruin beside Lake Champlain 69 

However, the earlier investment of the place by 
Ethan Allen is the better recalled. It was far more 
dramatic -^ " And yet," commented the old farmer 
whom I have previously quoted, " nothing was ever 
more foolhardy. Allen was completely in the power 
of the British. He played 'em a trick and the trick 
worked. It was just luck. If he hadn't succeeded, 
we'd all say what a crazy notion it was. Same way 
with Funston capturing Aguinaldo out in the Philip- 
pines. He come out all right, but it was chance just 
the same, and it'd been a foolish business if he'd 
fliiled." 




The Pasture in which stand the Old Fortifications 



IV 



IN THE ADIRONDACKS 




I 



'LL be ready in 
a minute," said 
the stage - coach 
driver, and then he 
spent half an hour 
stowing away a vast 
cargo of boxes, bar- 
rels, and other mis- 
cellany in his rusty, 
canopy - topped vehi- 
cle. So little spare 
space was left I was 
thankful that I was the 
only passenger. I had 
just alighted from a 
train at a little station 
among the outlying 
foot-hills of the mountains, and my destination was an 
inland valley. When the driver climbed in and took 
up his reins to start, I called his attention to several 

70 



A Fisherman 



In the Adirondacks 71 

great piles of hemlock bark near by awaiting transfer 
to some tannery. 

" Those piles ain't nothin' to what we used to see," 
was my companion's comment. " Our timber lands 
are growin' poorer all the time, and hemlock bark's 
gittin' more skurce every year. We're cuttin' off 
everythin' we c'n git a cent for — that's the trouble." 

From what the driver said and all I had heard of 
lumbering in the Adirondacks I expected to find the 
mountains much denuded, but to my eyes they seemed 
still heavily timbered. Yet most of the finest trees 
have undoubtedly been felled, and the ancient primeval 
majesty of the forest is departed forever. 

We had not gone far on our road when the driver 
pointed with his whip toward a high mountain slope 
across which there was a drift of yellow smoke. " By 
gol, look a' that ! " he exclaimed. " Thar's a fire up in 
thar, and it's started since I went down an hour ago. 
But it's too early in the season for it to burn good. 
The woods ain't dry yit. Last summer we fit fires 
stiddy for a month, and the fire wardens got out every 
one they could git. Sometimes thar'd be a hundred 
men workin' on the same mountain. We carried 
shovels and dug trenches. You see the top o' the 
ground was dry several inches deep, and would burn 
off. We'd dig down to whar it was damp, and when 
the fire got to the ditch we'd made it would usually 
stop ; but if thar was a stick lay across, or a dead tree 



72 New England and its Neighbors 

got to burnin' and fell over the line, the fire would start 
again and we'd have to trench around it once more. It 
ain't a job I like — fightin' fire — with all the smoke 
and climbin' and the diggin'. Sometimes I've been 
surrounded by the fire and had to break a way out 
through the flames. You have to look out for that." 

" How do the fires start ? " I asked. 

" We don't often find out for certain, but thar's a 
lot o' fire bugs in the mountains. They're sore over 
the game laws, or they start a fire so's to earn some 
money puttin' of it out. The pay's high enough to 
make that quite an inducement. We git two dollars 
a day. The state pays half and the town half; and 
you never can tell when you git a lot of men out 
whether they're workin' or not. Some of 'em just 
lie around drunk. Last year's fire ran over those 
ridges on ahead thar. You c'n see whar it's burnt, 
can't you ? " 

Yes, I could see long stretches of the upper moun- 
tains that seemed to be a charred desolation of black 
earth and gaunt, dead trees. It looked as if the green 
would never return. 

" Off on those higher mountains are white patches 
that appear to be snow," I remarked presently. 

" I do' know but they are. More likely, though, 
they're bare rocks and the sun glistenin' on water 
that's runnin' down over 'em. Still, thar's snow in 
some of the high hollows most all summer. We've 



In the Adirondacks 73 

got what they call an ice cave in the town whar I live, 
and every Fourth of July regular the young folks go 
up to it and have some fun snowballing. Thar'll be 
plenty of snow thar next Fourth if we c'n judge any- 
thing by the winter we've had. Worst winter for 
snow't I c'n remember. It begun in November with 
a three-foot storm that caught us all unexpected. I'd 
been ploughing the day before, and it buried my plough 
out of sight. I had to go and dig the plough out of a 
drift that was higher'n my head. For five days we was 
cut off from the mail and everything else. Dozens of 
weak roofs was broken in — mostly of sheds, piazzas, 
and barns, but sometimes of houses. After that storm 
we never had any let-up. The snow kept comin' and 
gittin' deeper all winter. Thar was too much for good 
sleighin' and too much for loggin' in the woods ; but 
it went fast as soon as the sun begun to warm up about 
the first of April." 

We were now going through a narrow pass between 
two mountains, and I mentioned the wildness of the 
spot to the driver. " Yes, it is kind o' wild," said he, 
" that's a fact. This is a great runway for bears across 
here. They've got a den back on one o' the ridges 
not fur away. You find their tracks in the road 
often, and about a year ago this time as I was walkin' 
m.y horses up the hill we're comin' to I see a bear — 
an old big fellow — large as a cow — diggin' out mice 
at the foot of a rotten stump. But they keep out o' 



74 New England and its Neighbors 

the way and don't often show themselves. Lot's o' 
people that have lived in the Adirondacks all their 
days have never laid eyes on a live wild bear. Do 
you know Len Hoskins? He's a hunter and guide, 
and he's got a little place off in the woods where he 
stays a good share o' the time. He sees bears every 
year. He routed out one bear right in the middle of 
winter. 'Twa'n't nothin' strange. The bears don't 
hide away in the rocks as you might think. Rocks are 
too cold. They like to crawl into some hollow, or a 
narrow place between two fallen trees and let the snow 
drift over 'em. This bear of Len's had put up not so 
very far from a wood road, and Len was goin' along 
and his dog was with him, and the dog run off among 
the trees and begun to bark and paw the snow. Len 
saw't he'd struck some game, and he sicked the dog on, 
and first thing he knew a bear rose up out of the snow. 
The bear got the dog, but Len, he had his gun, and he 
got the bear. 

" I had a little adventure myself one time when I 
was spending a few days with Len. He had some 
bear traps out and one o' the animiles got caught. It 
was a little year-old cub, and I expect it had been in 
the trap for at least two days when we found it. The 
trap had broke the bear's leg, and it had got out and 
left its leg behind, but it couldn't go far. We'd been 
out pickin' berries and hadn't nothing except our jack- 
knives and a couple of long sticks we'd cut for canes, 



In the Adirondacks 75 

and we'd 'a' let the bear alone if we'd thought we was 
goin' to have any trouble. That little beast was ter- 
rible spunky, if it didn't have but three legs, and soon 
as it see 'twa'n't no use tryin' to git away it showed 
fight. First it would go for Len and I'd whack it 
with my stick, and then it would turn on me and Len 
would git in a whack. We had a fifteen minutes' tussle, 
and I worked harder and sweat more than I ever have 
in that length of time before or since. But at last we 
killed the critter and slung him on a pole and carried 
him to camp. We had bear steak for a while then, 
and I called it better'n venison." 

"Do the bears ever trouble the farmers any?" I 
inquired. 

" No, they don't do much damage. I did some 
think they got six sheep o' mine a few years ago, but 
I guess those bears didn't have more'n two legs. Thar 
wa'n't the least sign o' the sheep to be found nowhar, 
and a bear always leaves the hide, if nothin' more. It's 
torn some, but it's cleaned out a good sight cleaner 
than you could git it with a knife. The deer do the 
most harm. They'll git over the best fence we got, 
and the back lots next to the woods ain't never safe 
from 'em. They spoil more'n a little grain for us, and 
they're gittin' worse, too. The law don't allow hunt- 
ing of 'em with hounds now, and they ain't so timid as 
they was, and they're increasin'. But thar's too many 
hunters for 'em ever to git very numerous." 



76 New England and its Neighbors 

About the middle of the afternoon, the stage reached 
the end of its route, and I continued farther into the 
mountains on foot. Most of the way the road led 
through the woodland up a valley, and had close 
beside it a swift, noisy stream. The forest was charm- 
ing with the emerald and tawny tints of spring, and was 
musical with bird songs. As for the walking, it might 
have been better. Sturdy rocks humped up out of the 
earth at intervals in the very centre of the highway, 
there were often muddy shallows in the low spots fed 
by little rivulets that trickled down the wheel tracks, 
and not infrequently I encountered boggy places 
which had been filled in with brush and corduroy. 
The corduroy was not, however, of a very strenuous 
type — not much more than saplings. You would 
have to search far now to find the genuine article, but 
it used to be common in the Adirondacks, wherever 
the road inclined to be soft. Ordinarily it consisted 
of substantial sticks about six inches in diameter, but 
which might be as much as ten. In any case they 
would fairly make one's teeth rattle to drive over 
them. 

Along the road I was travelling were occasional 
meadow openings occupied by a house or two, or per- 
haps several of them ; and in the fields near these 
houses I was pretty apt to see men and boys busy 
ploughing and planting. The land in the clearings 
was for the most part steep and broken, and the 




An Adirondack Farmer 



In the Adirondacks 77 

soil so stony that the progress of a man ploughing 
was very jerky and uncertain. He was constantly 
striking, not only loose stones of all sizes, but heavy 
boulders that brought him to frequent sudden stops. 
Then he had to pull and haul to get ready for a fresh 
start. 

Wherever I went during my Adirondack stay the 
houses were small and usually unpainted. The 
barns were likewise meagre and rusty, and though 
the storage room they afforded was likely to be eked 
out by a number of sheds and lean-tos, it never seemed 
to be equal to demands. A very common arrange- 
ment of the house buildings was to have the barns 
just across the road from the house. If such were the 
case, the manure heaps were very likely thrown out of 
the stable windows on the houseward side in conspic- 
uous view. This was simply a matter of barbaric 
convenience, and was formerly customary in all our 
older farming regions. 

The Adirondack sheds and barns were often of logs ; 
but the era of log construction is past, and buildings of 
this kind are becoming rarer every year. The majority 
of the log dwellings that still remain have been added 
to and improved past recognition, and the rudeness of 
those that continue as originally built is a constant 
distress if their caretakers have any pride. The logs 
used are hewed off a little on each face, so that they 
are halfway between round and square, and the chinks 



78 New England and its Neighbors 

are stopped with plaster. Such houses are considered 
warmer in winter than frame buildings ; but the floors 
are uneven, the log sills of the second story are exposed, 
and the walls inside and out are alternating ridges and 
hollows. If the rooms are papered, the roughness of 
the walls is still apparent, and the paper is sure to crack 
badly and peel off in spite of all that can be done. 

One of the Adirondack days I remember with 
especial pleasure was a certain lowery Friday. In the 
afternoon I was caught by a shower that came charg- 
ing with its mists down a mountain glen. I hastened 
along the forest road while the drops played a tattoo 
on the leaves overhead, until I reached a roadside 
house where I sought shelter in a woodshed with an 
open front. This shed was in the ell of a house 
adjoining the kitchen, and was used in part as a back 
room. The far side was stowed full of neatly piled 
split wood, but in the other half were pots and kettles 
and pails, a swill barrel, and a rusty stove. I asked a 
woman at work in the kitchen for a drink of water ; 
and she brought out a chair for me, and stepped across 
the yard and filled a dipper at a tub set in the ground. 
This tub was connected with a spring up the hill, the 
woman said; but, though springs were abundant, very 
few of the neighbors had running water. They were 
deterred by the expense of buying pipe, and got along 
with wells. From these they as a rule drew the water 
by means of some old-fashioned windlass contrivance. 



In the Adirondacks 79 

or a pole with a hook on the end, or an antiquated 
well-sweep. 

I had not been long in the shed where I had taken 
refuge when a small boy in a big straw hat came 
around the corner of the house. He carried a fish- 
pole and a tin box. He had been fishing for trout, he 
said, but had caught chubs. 

" Do you always fish for trout ? " I questioned. 

" Yes." 

" And do you ever catch any ? " 

" No," he acknowledged despondently, "just 
chubs. I put 'em in this box. It's full of water." 

He took off the cover and showed me several tiny 
fish swimming about within. 

" Are they good to eat ? " I inquired. 

" No, they're only good to kill," he responded with 
frank innocence of his savagery. 

Now his mother called to him. " Willie," she said, 
" I wish you would bring in some wood before it rains 
any harder — that wood outdoors, you know, that we 
didn't have room for in the shed." 

The boy went lingeringly toward the remnants of a 
pile in the yard. " It's thunderin', mamma," said he. 

" You'd better hurry, then." 

" Sounds hke tumbhn' down stones." 

" Hurry up ! " 

" Mamma, there's a hawk !" 

" Well, I don't care ! " 



8o 



New England and its Neighbors 



" It's a chicken- 
hawk, I guess ! 
Come aout and see 
it. It'll get those 
little chickens of 
ourn." 

" Don't stan'out 
there hollerin' any 
longer — bring in 
the wood." 

But the boy had 
slipped away be- 
hind the house, and 
a few moments 
later he reappeared 
with his father, 
whom he had sum- 
moned from the 
cornfield. 

" Let me have 

Shelling Seed Corn my gun ! " the man 

called to his wife, with his eyes turned skyward toward 
the hawk, and the woman handed it out to him. He 
clicked a cartridge into the muzzle and aimed at the 
soaring bird. But he did not fire. " Too high up," 
said he, lowering the gun and passing it back to his wife. 
" Well," he went on, " I guess I'll shell some seed 
corn, and then if it keeps on rainin' I'll go fishin'." 




In the Adirondacks 8i 

" Do you go fishing every time it rains ? " I 
queried. 

" No, but I'm pretty apt to. The fish bite better 
in drizzlin' weather." 

He did not go this time, for he had hardly got his 
corn and sat down in the shed to shell it, using his 
hands and a cob, when the sun began to glint through 
the flying drops and to brighten the green, watery land- 
scape. " Hello ! " said the man, " ' Rain and shine 
to-day, rain to-morrer.' That's the old saying, but 
I'd like to have it pleasant for about a week so I could 
finish up planting." 

As soon as the shower was over I resumed my 
rambling, and the tumbled ridges of the Adirondacks 
never loomed finer than they did then, veiled in the 
moist haze that succeeded the rain, with here and 
there a filmy cloud floating across the loftier heights. 
Wherever I obtained an extended view, the mountains 
looked mighty and magnificent enough to satisfy their 
most ardent admirers. I plodded along the muddy 
roadway, sometimes in the dripping woods, sometimes 
amid little house clearings. Toward evening I met a 
small drove of cows coming home from pasture in 
charge of a woman, the whole making a delightfully 
idyllic bit of life there on the quiet of the secluded 
forest way, with a murmuring stream close at hand and 
the tink, tink of the bell on the leading cow's neck 
adding its musical, rustic accompaniment. A little 



82 



New England and its Neighbors 



later I came to a house with a pasture just across the 
road, and in the pasture a lad milking. The boy said 
most people drove their cows into the barnyard to 




Bringing in the Cows after their Day's Grazing 

milk them, but his folks always milked them there at 
the pasture bars in summer. I had stopped to ask if 
I could get kept over night at some place near, and he 
sent me to the next house up the hill — Mr. Macey's. 



In the Adirondacks 83 

One never has much trouble in getting lodged in 
the Adirondacks. The wayfarer can find accommoda- 
tion at almost any home where he chooses to stop, and 
the standard price is fifty cents for a room with supper 
and breakfast. The house 1 sought was a little brown 
dwelling on a slope overlooking a vast sweep of valley 
and dim mountains. Mr. Macey was standing in the 
yard smoking his pipe when I approached — a thin, 
gray man of rather more than threescore years. In 
response to my question as to whether I could stay for 
the night he leisurely removed his pipe and said : 
"You'll find my wife and daughter in the house thar. 
It's the. women folks that do the work. All I do is 
the eatin'. You c'n talk with them." 

A stout, elderly woman appeared at the kitchen 
door just then, set two pails of milk out on the piazza, 
and asked rather sharply, "Why don't you feed this to 
the calves as you was goin' to an hour ago ? " 

The old man stepped over to the piazza and took 
the pails with an alacrity that betokened a smitten con- 
science. At the same time I went to the door and 
proffered my request for lodging. 

"It wouldn't be convenient to-night," replied Mrs. 
Macey. " We're goin' to keep a spectacle pedler 
that came along before supper, and it wouldn't be 
convenient to take any one else." 

I was turning away when I was met by one of the 
sons of the family coming across the yard from the 



84 New England and its Neighbors 

barn with the pedler of spectacles. " What's the 
matter ? " he asked. " Where you goin' ? Can't get 
kept? Well, I'd like to know why ! See here! " he 
continued, turning to his companion, " you're used to 
sleepin' three in a bed, ain't you ? " 

" Yes, sure, six ! " 

" Do you kick ? " 

" No, but I give you fair warnin' I'm a snorer." 

" That's all right. You just as soon bunk in with 
this man, hadn't you ? " 

" Why, yes! If he's satisfied, I am." 

So it was settled and I stayed. The house proved 
to be of logs, but these had been clapboarded over, and 
the real construction was not revealed until I went 
inside. There I found the logs very apparent, though 
partially hidden by a covering of wall-paper. Over- 
head was the flooring of the rooms upstairs, with the 
long sagging logs that served for joists incrusted with 
many coatings of whitewash. 

While I sat at supper eating alone, for I was late 
and the others had finished, Mr, Macey came into the 
back room. *' I been talkin' with that spectacle man," 
he remarked to his wife, " and he's a plaguey nice fel- 
ler, I'll bet ye." 

" Well, you be careful then he don't sell you nothin' 
you don't want," was Mrs. Macey's comment, as she 
came in to the supper table with a plate of cake. The 
dog followed her. " Here, get out of here," she com- 



In the Adirondacks 



85 



manded, taking up a piece of bread and throwing it out 
into the back room. 

Mr. Macey had entered the dining room and was 
standing by the stove opening his jack-knife. " That's 
a good dog," he said to me, " if he does get in the 




Picking up Chips 

way once in a while. He ain't never barking and 
snapping at people. I'd as lieve a man's children 
would come out and throw stones at me as to have his 
dog run out and bark at me every time I go past." 

Mr. Macey now took up a stick and began to whittle 
shavings. He did not sever them from the stick, but 



86 New England and Its Neighbors 

left them fast at one end. When he had bristled up 
the stick to his satisfaction, he laid it down, and took 
up another which he treated in like manner. 

"What are you making ? " I inquired. 

" Kindlings. You see you touch a match to the 
ends o' them shavings and it'll start up a good blaze 
right off. Whittling kindlings is a job I do every 
night. I have to have two or three sticks fixed for 
this stove, and two or three tor the back-room stove, 
I'm usin' cedar wood from some old fence posts at 
present, but I like pine better when we can git it." 

After I finished eating I visited the barn, where I 
found Mr. Macey's two sons, Geoffry and "Ted," 
milking. They were lively, capable fellows about 
eighteen or twenty years of age. I was just in time to 
see Ted get into trouble with his cow. The creature 
put her foot in his pail, and he jumped up, fierce with 
wrath, and banged her with his stool, and called her 
slab-sided, and went on to blast her with as wild and 
sulphurous a string of invectives as I have ever heard. 
But the milking was nearly done, and the boys soon 
went to the house. The family presently got together 
in the dining room, which also served as a sitting room 
and to some extent as a kitchen, and the spectacles 
pedler and I " made ourselves at home " with them. 

" If I had such a cow as that red and yellow one I'd 
sell her," Ted remarked to his father with great disgust. 

" What's the matter ? " 



In the Adirondacks gy 

"She's got altogether too contrary a disposition. 
You can't make her stand still." 

" She'll stand still as a mouse when I milk her." 

" These are the easiest galluses ever I wore," inter- 
rupted GeofFry, giving a hitch to his suspenders ; " but 
they feel darn funny when the buttons are off." 

" They're made o' leather, ain't they ? " asked the 
spectacles pedler. 

" Yes," GeofFry replied, " I had 'em built special at 
the harness-maker's. Come, Ted, sew on this button, 
will you ? " 

" ni sew it on," said his mother. 

" No you won't, ma. You've done enough to-day. 
Td sew it on myself if it wa'n't around back of me." 

Ted was willing enough and seated himself behind 
his brother and got to work, at the same time men- 
tioning to his sister that he wished to goodness she'd 
make some pie-plant pie. " I was looking in the garden 
this afternoon," he went on, "and the pie-plant's 
gettin' good and big." 

" Oh, gee, Ted ! why don't you say rhubarb ? " 
Molly commented. " If you was ever to take dinner 
at a restaurant in the city, and ask for pie-plant pie, 
they wouldn't know what you meant. They'd think 
you never had been out of the woods before." 

" That wouldn't be anything much," declared Mr. 
Macey. " There's people here in this town that nev- 
er've been outside the county — men older'n I am." 



88 New England and its Neighbors 

" There's some people in this town too smart for 
the clothes they wear, I know that ! " affirmed Geoffry, 
severely. 

" I'll warrant you there are ! " exclaimed the pedler 
of spectacles. "Some in my town too." 

" I know a girl," said the daughter of the house, 
"who's never seen a train of cars in her life, and she's 
twenty-two years old." 

" I jolly ! " said the spectacles man, " if I was one o' 
you boys, I'd hitch up and take that girl down to see 
the cars right off." 

" Oh, thunder ! you don't know the girl," snorted 
Geoffry, " or you wouldn't be so sure. She'd talk you 
to death. It's nineteen miles to the railroad and nine- 
teen back." 

" It's more than that, my kind little friend," said 
Ted, and then the two brothers entered into a dispute 
to settle the exact distance. 

Meanwhile, Mr. Macey had got out his pipe and 
was filling it. " I hain't been everywhere," he re- 
marked, " but I'd be ashamed o' myself if I hadn't 
never seen a train o' cars." 

"Say, mister, you would, wouldn't you?" was the 
pedler's comment. 

" Well, a man that's more curious to me than any- 
one else around here," began Geoffry, " is a fellow I 
know of who gets his living by sitting in his chair and 
making ashes, and he's got a large family to support. 




The Kitchen Door of a Log House 



In the Adirondacks 89 

Making ashes is about all I've ever seen him do — 
just smoking, you know. I've offered to give him a 
cow for the receipt of how to live without doing noth- 
ing. He ain't got no cow, and he needs one bad, but 
he won't sell me the receipt." 

" He's got a horse," said Ted. 

" Yes, but what's that horse o' his'n good for ? " 
queried Mr. Macey, " He keeps it just for swapping. 
He'd spend all his time swapping horses if he could 
find any one to swap with, specially when he sees a 
chance o' gittin' something to boot. If he c'n git 
a dollar to boot, it don't matter what sort of a horse he 
gits ; and there's times he'll only git a rooster or a 
dozen eggs. Then, again, he maybe has to pay boot. 
But I c'n say one thing for him — he'd starve before 
he'd steal." 

" Pete Foster's laid up yet with his sprained ankle," 
remarked Geoffry, changing the subject. " He says 
he wishes it had been a broken bone. Thinks if it 
had been, he could 'a' ordered a new one and got it here 
by this time, and been out and around." 

" What'd he say about that two-shillin' hen he 
bought ? " inquired Ted. " He's tellin' everybody 
that now." 

" Oh, he said he bought the hen, and the idea struck 
him he'd have it to eat, seein' he was kind of an invalid 
at present. So he got the hen ready for the kittle, and 
his wife set up all night and boiled it. She didn't 



90 New England and its Neighbors 

seem to make much progress in cookin' it tender, so 
they boiled it all day, and 'twa'n't done then, and Pete 
he set up all that night to keep it boilin', and the next 
morning, he tried it again, and it was so tough he 
couldn't stick a fork into the water it had been boilin' 
in." 

" Pete's kep' pretty straight sence he took the Kee- 
ley cure, hain't he ? " Mr. Macey interrogated. 

" Yes ; he won't even eat mince pie that's got cider 
in it." 

" Do many take the Keeley cure here ? " I inquired. 

" Oh, land, yes, lots of 'em ; and some come back 
and go right to drinkin' again ; and then perhaps 
they'll take the cure a second time and pay the hundred- 
dollar fee twice over and still drink. But with a good 
many it really makes a man of 'em. I've known fel- 
lers cured that beforehand was that crazy for drink 
they'd swallow Jamaica ginger or peppermint essence, 
if they couldn't get anything else." 

" What did you mean awhile ago when you were 
telling of a two-shilling hen ? " I asked Ted. 

"I meant it cost two shillin's — two York shillin's 
— same as twenty-five cents. Folks speak of shillin's 
a good deal round here, though there ain't no money 
of that denomination, and never has been since I c'n 
remember. Mostly we reckon in shillin's when we 
c'n talk about a single shillin' or two shillin's. Some- 
times you hear four shillin's instead of fifty cents, and 



In the Adirondacks 91 

ten shillin's instead of a dollar and a quarter, but for 
the rest we say dollars and cents." 

" At the house where I had dinner this noon," said 
I, " the man told me he went fishing the other day 
and put six flies on his line, and he hooked three fish 
at once. He got two of them, and the smaller one 
weighed a pound and the other weighed two pounds, 
and the one that broke away was big as both those he 
caught put together." 

" How'd he know about the heft of the one that 
broke away ? " queried Mr. Macey. 

" He didn't explain that point," I replied. " He 
said he caught the fish in the river down in the valley 
below here, and they were trout from California that 
had been put in the lake up above. They were so 
gamey he couldn't pull them out, and he had to play 
them and use a net." 

" I've heard about their putting in those trout there 
from California or some other foreign country," said 
Ted. " I hooked one myself down in the holler last 
summer and it did act queer, but I finally treed it and 
got it." 

" What was the man's name where you stayed for 
dinner ? " Mrs. Macey asked. 

" Dickon." 

"Dickon!" ejaculated Geoflry. "Well, I hope 
the Lord you didn't believe all he told you ! " 

" Did you have Dutch cheese there .? " inquired 



92 New England and its Neighbors 

Mr. Macey. " They're great hands for Dutch cheese 
at Dickon's." 

"They had it on the table," I answered, "but it 
isn't a thing I care for." 

" Gosh, I do ! I wish I had a chunk of it in my 
paw now. I'd lay down my pipe and eat it. Where 
was it Dickon said they'd put in those trout ? " 

" He said in the lake." 

" What lake's that, I wonder." 

"He meant the pond, father," GeofFry explained. 
" The city people don't like ponds, and I don't believe 
there's a pond left in the Adirondacks now. Dickon 
drives for one of the sporting-houses in the summer, 
and he's caught the city notion of giving what we've 
always known as a pond a more tony title." 

" What do you mean by a sporting-house ? " I 
asked. 

"Oh, just a house where the city people stay — a 
summer hotel. There's one sporting-house in this 
town that'll accommodate three hundred people. It's 
only about two miles from here, but you have to climb 
a deuce of a hill to get to it." 

" We've got a picture of it somewhere," said Mrs. 
Macey. " Won't you see if you can find it, GeofFry ? 
and perhaps this gentleman would like to look at that 
picture of our house we had taken last year." 

GeofFry after a short absence brought forth the 
latter from the next room, remarking : " I can't find 



In the Adirondacks 



93 



the sporting-house, but here's this. It was made by 
some men that came along in a photograph cart. 




Sowing Oats 

That's my mother and beloved sister sitting out in 
front with the dog. There wa'n't no one else at 



94 New England and its Neighbors 

home. You can see the shingles that we'd patched 
the roof with where it had been leakin', and the whole 
thing's very natural, I think." 

" A while after the fellers had been along with their 
cart," said Mr. Macey, " they come again and brought 
the picture all finished to sell, and they wanted two 
dollars for it. That was too much. I'd a' paid a 
dollar and been glad to ; but they began to throw off 
when they see I wouldn't pay their price, and then I 
didn't know wh. j the thing was worth. They got 
down to fifty cents finally, and I said I'd give 'em 
a quarter. They said the lowest they'd take was half 
a dollar. So after a while they started off, but they 
hadn't got far when they stopped and hollered back 
for me to get my quarter. It was a good bargain, I 
guess." 

" I don't think so," commented Molly. " What 
do you want a picture of your own house for? If you 
want to see your house, all you have to do is to go out 
and look at it." 

" I'd like a picture of some of the houses the way 
they was when I was a boy," said her father — "log 
houses with stone chimneys outside built against 
the ends. In the kitchen you'd find fireplaces big 
enough to take in a backlog four feet long and two 
feet through. I'd like to see my daughter here try 
to get a meal in one o' those fireplaces. I know just 
how my mother used to fry flapjacks — she'd stand 



In the Adirondacks g^ 

there front o' the fire with her long-handled frying-pan, 
and when a cake was done on one side she'd give a 
shake to loosen it and then toss it up, and it would 
come down on the other side. The floors were of 
split logs hewed off flat. The kitchen'd have one 
or two bedrooms opening off of it, and up above 
under the roof there'd be a long, low chamber that 
you went up to by a ladder. 

" My wife, here, has a wool wheel yet, and spins 
her own yarn and some to sell ; anu a good many of 
the older women in the Adirondacks does the same. 
But the spinning they do is nothing to what their 
mothers did. Besides wool, they used to spin flax, 
and they had looms and wove their own cloth, and 
they made all the clothes for the family. I c'n 
remember, too, how in the winter my grandmother 
would put on a pair of men's boots, and wade through 
the snow to the barn to milk. Some women still 
know how to milk, but very few make a practice of 
it. I tell you, them old-time women did a lot o' work 
that the women don't do these days. 

"In my grandmother's family they ate ofl* pewter 
plates. They didn't have no crockery, and when 
company came they'd use the pewter just the same, 
only they'd give it a special shinin' first. 

" My mother every fall'd make up twenty-five or 
thirty dozen of dipped candles, enough to last till 
spring. Candles was all we had for lightin' the house. 



96 



New England and its Neighbors 



and we had to use 'em, too, in our lanterns. Them 
lanterns was tin, like a tall four-quart pot all pricked 




Spinning Yarn for the Family Stockings 

full of holes, and the holes only let out the light in 
little slivers, so't if you wanted to see anything you 



In the Adirondacks 97 

had to open the lantern and give the candle a chance. 
I recollect the time when we began to buy lamps for 
whale oil, and, later, what they called fluid lamps — 
a spindlin' kind of a glass lamp with two wicks and 
little brass caps to go over the ends of the wicks for 
extinguishers ; and then finally karosene come into 
use. 

" When I was a boy lots o' people would go to 
church in ox-teams, and sometimes a man would go 
on horseback with his wife settin' behind him. We 
didn't dress up as much then for church as we do 
now. I've been to meetin' barefoot, many a time." 

My attention was presently attracted from Mr. 
Macey's reminiscences by a game his sons had started. 
They said they were playing " Bumblebee." Ted 
had his fists together, thumbs up, with a light stick 
poised on them. GeofFry was moving the forefinger 
of his right hand around the end of the stick in an 
erratic manner, sometimes slowly, sometimes fast, and 
dodging this way and that. At the same time he 
made a variable buzzing sound with his mouth. 
Suddenly he picked up the stick and gave his 
brother's thumbs a smart rap. " There ! " said he, 
turning to the rest of us, " the bumblebee stung 
him." 

Ted had tried to part his fists and let the stick pass 
harmlessly between them, but he had not been quick 
enough. If he had succeeded he could have been the 

H 



98 New England and its Neighbors 

bumblebee himself, and tried to sting Geoffry. The 
game went on for some minutes, and then Ted turned 
to me and asked if I had ever played " Chipmunk." 

I had not, and the brothers proceeded to illustrate. 
Ted got down on all fours, facing GeofFry, and the latter, 
who remained seated, spread apart his legs and by put- 
ting his open hands just inside his knees made a kind 
of human trap. Ted, squeaking and chattering in 
imitation of a chipmunk, dodged his head this way and 
that over the trap, and when he thought there was a 
good opportunity bobbed it down between Geoffry's 
legs, while Geoffry attempted to make a capture by 
thumping his knees and hands together. But the chip- 
munk had escaped, and he set his trap again. Ted, this 
time from below, went on chattering and making feints 
to confuse GeofFry until he fancied he could safely jerk 
his head back up ; and when GeofFry really did grip 
Ted's head the two changed places. Long before they 
had wearied of this sport, Mrs. Macey, who had retired, 
called out from an adjoining room, " Boys, do stop that 
noise and go to bed. I shan't get to sleep to-night if 
you keep up that racket," and this brought the even- 
ing's sociability to a close. 

In the morning the family were stirring about four 
o'clock, and by breakfast time, at half-past five, a good 
start had been made on the day's work. Salt pork had 
chief place in our morning bill of fare, but was supple- 
mented by boiled eggs and pancakes made from home- 



In the Adirondacks 



99 




A Home in a Valley 

grown buckwheat. As soon as we finished eating, the 
boys turned the cows and sheep out to pasture, hitched 
a pair of horses to a wagon and drove off to an out- 
lying field they were planting to potatoes. The spec- 
tacles pedler lingered a short time in an attempt to 
dispose of some of his wares and then resumed his 
itinerant journeying. Mrs. Macey and Molly busied 
themselves with the kitchen work, while Mr. Macey, 
after doing a number of small jobs around the place, sat 
down on the piazza to cut seed potatoes. The best of 
the potatoes he sliced into a bushel basket, the small 
ones he put in a pail to boil for the pigs, and the rot- 
ten ones he dropped into another pail to throw away. 

L.cFC. 



lOO New England and Its Neighbors 

"When I was a youngster," said Mr. Macey, "we 
used to begin saving the seed end of the potatoes — that's 
the end the eyes are on, you know — in February. 
We'd eat the other half." 

"Yes," added Mrs. Macey, who had left her house- 
work to help with the potato-slicing, " and by plant- 
ing time we'd have a great lot o' those dried-up ends 
ready. They didn't look as if they'd grow, but they 
would." 

About eight o'clock Ted came with the team to get 
what potatoes were ready for the ground. " Why, 
good Lord! father," he exclaimed as he alighted, "don't 

cut any more. We shan't know what to do with 

> j> 
em. 

But Mr. Macey was sure the supply was still insuffi- 
cient and kept on. Just then a tidily dressed little 
girl passed along the road on her way to school. 
" Good morning, Gusty," said the people on the 
piazza. 

The schoolhouse was not far distant — a small, clap- 
boarded wooden building with a board fence around 
the yard. I had looked into it while on a walk that 
morning, and I had on previous occasions visited several 
others in the mountains. They were all much the 
same — very plain outside and in. A box stove was 
always present with its long elbowing pipe, and they 
were certain to be equipped with rude double desks 
made by the local carpenters — desks that were appar- 



In the Adirondacks loi 

ently used as much by the pupils for whittling pur- 
poses as for study. 

The school year in the mountain villages consists of 
two terms of sixteen weeks each, so arranged as to have 
the teachers free in summer to serve as waiters in the 
sporting-houses. The usual pay received by a school- 
mistress is seven dollars a week. Out of this she has 
to pay her board unless she resides in the district. If 
she goes home Friday night to stay over Sunday, she 
may get boarded for two dollars ; but if she stays the 
full week, she has to pay from two and a half to three 
dollars. " We used to pay women teachers a dollar a 
week, and they boarded round," said Mr. Macey ; " but 
of course we had to pay a man in winter considerable 
more. I don't think the schools are as good now as 
they were. They don't have as good discipline." 

" No," remarked Ted, " the teachers leave their 
sled stake outdoors now. About all they do is to 
give the scholars a tongue-banging." 

" The boys used to be learnt to bow and the girls 
to courtesy," Mr. Macey continued, " and when school 
was dismissed they wa'n't allowed to leave on the 
jump. Now, when they have recess, you c'n hear 'em 
for miles the minute they're out. Another thing we 
did a sight better'n they do these days was spellin'. 
We was always havin' spellin' matches in the school, 
and our best spellers would go and spell against those 
in other schools, and we'd have great times." 



I02 New England and its Neighbors 

" You'd ought to seen the schoolhouse we had here 
eight years ago," said Ted. " It was made of logs and 
it had got so old it wa'n't fit to keep calves in. The 
sides were squshing out, and some of the sleepers that 
held up the floor had rotted off one end and some the 
other end. The stove had a rack around it on the 
floor two or three inches high, that was filled in with 
small stones and dirt, so the sparks and coals falling 
out from the stove wouldn't set the building on fire. 
The last teacher I had was Jane Traver. Her great 
punishment was to have every boy that didn't behave 
roll a boulder into the schoolroom from the yard and 
sit on it. I didn't mind that. It bothered her more 
than it did me. I'd spread my handkerchief over it, 
and then she'd scold me, and I'd tell her I had to put 
my handkerchief on there, the rock was so hard." 

Ted paused and took something from the bottom 
of his wagon. " Here's an animile we killed over by 
the woods this morning," said he, holding it up. 

"A hedgehog, eh?" was Mr. Macey's comment. 
" That reminds me of a ghost story. I suppose you 
know what to say to a ghost ? " he inquired, looking 
toward me. 

No, I did not. 

"You want to say, ' In the name o' God, what do 
you want o' me? ' Then the ghost'll have to answer. 
But what I was goin' to tell about was a happenin' 
years ago at a neighbor's by the name o' Stetson. 



In the Adirondacks 103 

They heard a sound every night like sawing wood, in 
the woodshed with a buck-saw." 

"Did they?" Ted interrupted. "You bet your 
life I'd get up a lot of wood and let the ghost saw." 

" The people would look into the shed," his father 
continued, "and there wa'n't nothin' there. Well, 
that sawin' kep' on, and every night the folks would 
come from all around to hear it, and the Stetsons was 
gettin' pretty well scared. By and by I went one 
night, and I heard the sawin' same as the rest, and we 
took the light and looked into the shed and couldn't 
find nothin' to cause the sound, high nor low. Then 
I went outside, and just around the corner, what'd I 
find but a hedgehog, gnawing at an old barrel the 
Stetsons had bought salt mackerel in ; and I threw 
the barrel down into a brook that was close by, and 
they never had no more trouble after that with any 
ghost sawin' wood in their woodshed. You see it 
sounded so like it was inside, no one never thought 
to look outside before." 

" Well, I don't wonder the people was frightened," 
said Mrs. Macey. " Even a little mouse will make a 
horrid noise in the night." 

"Yes," declared Ted, as he and his father emptied 
the cut potatoes into the wagon, " and if you hear a 
gray squirrel running through the leaves in the au- 
tumn, you'd think a catamount was after you." 

With this remark, Ted drove off, and not long after- 



I04 New England and its Neighbors 

ward I left the farm-house, and began my day's tramp- 
ing. 1 became acquainted with a good many of the 
mountain people, by the time my Adirondack trip 
ended, and it seemed to me that their general intelli- 
gence was of a high order, and that, in spite of lack of 
polish, they were sure to win the respect of any one 
who was at all in sympathy with rural life. They 
have not yet lost the pioneer flavor and are still 
wrestling with nature in the woods far from railroads, 
unaffected by cities and by the influx of foreign im- 
migrants. They are Yankees of a primitive sort that 
has pretty much disappeared from New England. 
Among them is a certain proportion of the shiftless 
and unthrifty, but in the main I thought them hard- 
working and ambitious of bettering their condition. 
Their language was picturesque and had its local tang, 
but it was seldom grotesque and ignorant. In dress, 
the men and boys were addicted to wearing felt hats, 
which continued in use long after the bands frayed 
and disappeared, and till these articles of apparel had 
become shapeless and faded to the last degree, but 
beautiful and harmonious with the environment, never- 
theless. The other work-day garments of the people 
had the same earthy, elemental look, and were appar- 
ently never thrown away as long as thread and needle 
and patches would make them hold together. 

It was a pleasure to get acquainted with the children, 
they were so modest and unsophisticated. I liked to 



In the Adirondacks 



105 



watch the boys working in the fields and the gentle little 
girls playing about the home yards. They get a good 
elementary education in the district schools, and a 
generous proportion of them continue their studies 
at the academies in the large villages, and many after 
that go to Albany and take a course in a business col- 
lege. As to the future of the Adirondack people, the 
region impressed me as a fresh upland fountain of 
human energy, certain to contribute much of its strength 
to the town life of the nation in the days to come. 




A Roadside Chat 



THE HOME OF FENIMORE COOPER 




On L'ooperstown Street 



IN 1785 William 
Cooper, the novel- 
ist's father, visited 
the rough, hilly country 
in Otsego County of cen- 
tral New York. At that 
time the region contained 
no trace of any road and 
not a single white inhabit- 
ant. " I was alone," he 
says, " three hundred 
miles from home, with- 
out bread, meat, or food 
of any kind. My horse 
fed on the grass that grew 
by the edge of the waters. 
I laid me down to sleep 
in my watch-coat, noth- 
ing but the melancholy 
wilderness around me." 



Yet the pleasant landscape, the fertility of the soil, 
and the fact that an estate here was his for the taking, 

106 



The Home of Fenimore Cooper 107 

made him determine that this should be his abode. 
At the southern end of Otsego Lalce, where for a 
century the Indian traders had been accustomed to 
resort, he two years later laid out a village, and to this 
spot he in 1790 brought his family. 

The novelist was the eleventh of twelve children. 
He was born in 1789, at Burlington, New Jersey, 
the residence of his mother's people, and was taken 
to Cooperstown when he was thirteen months old. 
There he lived a healthy, natural, country life, sur- 
rounded by pioneer out-of-door influences that did 
much to direct his tastes and shape his character. 
The house in which he dwelt during his early boy- 
hood was an ordinary farm-house; but in 1798 his 
father erected the good-sized mansion known to fame 
as Otsego Hall. This stood on rising ground, facing 
the lake, with the village clustering about it, and both 
in its generous proportions and its situation was a fit- 
ting home for the town's founder and chief citizen. 

The site of the old Hall is still the heart of the 
town. The village has grown, but it huddles closest 
on the narrow southern margin of the lake. Here is 
a single, broad business street that runs square across 
the valley of the lake-basin, and at either end is a 
wooded bluff. From this main thoroughfare the 
houses straggle away on various minor streets and 
lanes. The place has many characteristics of a country 
market town, but at the same time it contains numer- 



io8 New England and its Neighbors 

ous hotels, and frequent summer residences of city 
people are scattered along its waterside suburbs. The 
lake stretchincT away to the north is attractive and the 
environment in general is agreeable, yet nature has not 
been lavish enough in bestowing its charms to account 
for the magnetism of the place as a vacation resort, 
considering its comparative remoteness and inaccessi- 
bility. , No doubt the magic of Cooper's name fur- 
nishes the real explanation, for the region is everywhere 
redolent of him and his famous romances. In the 
case of two of them the scenes are laid immediately 
about the lake. " The Deerslayer " depicts the neigh- 
borhood as it was in 1745, prior to its settlement, when 
all around was unbroken forest; while "The Pioneers" 
is the story of the founding of Cooperstown. Topo- 
graphically the descriptions are very taithtul, and spots 
abound which can be easily identified with incidents of 
the narratives. 

The town was more than ordinarily lively on the 
morning* I arrived, for I chanced to be just in time to 
witness quite an exodus of the more frothy, sporty, and 
youthful of the inhabitants on their way to a circus 
that was holding forth in a neighboring place. The 
occasion was one of great prospective hilarity, and tor 
some of the crowd it would run into dissipation unless 
the looks of the celebrators belied them. The situation 
was most definitely presented by a man riding to the 
station in a hotel 'bus. As the vehicle rumbled down 



The Home of Fenimore Cooper 109 

the street, he shouted, whenever he happened to see an 
acquaintance : " You want to meet me at the depot to- 
night with a wagon; and say — you have the side- 
boards on ! Yes, don't forget the sideboards ! " 




Looking toward the Town from an Eastern Hillslope 

My rambling while I was at Cooperstown was 
confined to a radius of a few miles. First, of course. 
It took me to the green borders of the near lake in the 
immediate vicinity of the village. The turf, dotted 
with trees, descended unbroken almost to the water's 
edge. Numerous wharves reached out from the shore, 
most of them slight affairs giving access to a rowboat, 
but two of them much longer and more substantial for 
the accommodation of the pleasure steamers that make 
constant trips up and down the lake through the 
summer. On the eastern verge of the village was 



no New England and its Neighbors 

the channel where the waters find a way to escape ; 
and they departed so gently and the tree-embowered 
passage was so narrow it was not easy to realize that 
here I beheld the source of the Susquehanna. 

On this same side of the lake, just outside the town, 
are pasture slopes, delightful at the time of my visit, 
with cows grazing in the dandelion-spangled grass. 
Down below, the shore was fringed with bushes, among 
which were many " shad-berries " and " pin-cherries " 
all ablow with white blossoms. The land on this 
side of the lake as you go on farther rises in steep 
ridges overgrown with woods ; and dwellings and 
cultivated fields are infrequent. I preferred the other 
side whenever I chose to take a long walk. It is more 
pastoral, the slopes milder. I recall one afternoon's 
walk on the western highway in particular. The new 
leafage was getting well started, the grass was beginning 
to grow rank in the meadows, and the air was full of 
bird-songs. Chipmunks and red squirrels chattered 
among the trees and raced up and down the trunks 
and through the branches with almost as much ease as 
if they had wings. The prevalence of the streams, too, 
contributed to the spring gayety. They were every- 
where, varying from tiny tricklings to lusty brooks 
capable of turning the wheels of a small grist or saw 
mill. Noise and haste were dominant traits, and they 
coursed down the hills through channels littered with 
rocks and pebbles, and made many a shining leap. 




The Margin of the Lake 



The Home of Fenimore Cooper 1 1 1 

I kept on for several miles. Sometimes the road 
was close by the lake, sometimes well back up the 
slopes. Once I made a detour and went down to the 
water's edge across a swamp where flourished jungles 
of poison ivy. At my approach a sandpiper fled with 
thin-voiced protest in nervous flight along the shore, 
and a profound-looking kingfisher gave a squeak and 
adjourned to some nook more secluded. They might 
have saved themselves the trouble of such exertion on 
my account, for the wetness of the marsh and the 
prevalence of the poison vines discouraged me, and I 
was glad to beat a hasty retreat. 

When I at length had gone northward as far as I 
cared to and had turned back toward the town, I was 
overtaken by a lumber wagon drawn by a heavy pair 
of work-horses. The driver pulled up and asked me 
to ride, and I accepted the invitation. The horses 
never trotted, but they walked briskly enough to 
keep the springless wagon constantly jolting, and the 
ride was not altogether comfortable. Still, the change 
was welcome, for the road was decidedly muddy. 

"They've been over it lately with the road-scraper," 
explained my companion, " and dragged in the dirt 
from the sides. It's dirt that washed off from the 
road, and it's all wore out and ain't fit for a road any 
more, and the last rain we had just softened it into 
pudding. This road was a plank road when I was a 
little shaver. There was a lot of plank roads then. 



112 New England and its Neighbors 

They was very good when they was new, and we'd 
rattle along fine — ten miles an hour the stage cal- 
culated to make. If you met a team you had to turn 
off on the ground because the plank wa'n't only long 
enough for a single track, but the tops was laid level 
with the ground, and that didn't matter. The greatest 
trouble was that the plank got worn after a while and 
the knots begun to stick out, and new planks put in 
here and there helped make it more uneven — kind o' 
shook you up then. 

" This road was planked twenty-seven miles, all the 
way to Fort Plain on the New York Central. That 
was where we had to go whenever we wanted to get 
to the railroad. It was a hard journey, especially at 
the break-up of winter, when the stage was sometimes 
much as two hours getting through — part way on 
wheels, and part way on runners, perhaps. We was 
mighty glad, I can tell you, when this little branch 
railroad that strikes in here from the south was 
finally built. The plank roads was owned by private 
companies, and there was toll gates every four or five 
miles, but it was too costly keepin' the plank in repair, 
and by and by they pulled 'em up and put in gravel 
turnpikes. Those didn't pay either, and so the com- 
panies went out of business and let the public fix their 
own roads." 

As the driver finished speaking, we were passing a 
broad field on the farther side of which I could see 



The Home of Fenimore Cooper 



113 




Putting on a Fresh Coat of Paint 

three children wandering about and occasionally stoop- 
ing to pick something. "What are they doing?" I 
asked. 

" Seem to be cutting dandelion greens," was the 



114 New England and its Neighbors 

reply ; " but it's gettin' rather past time for dande- 
lions, and they'll have to boil 'em in soda-water to 
take the toughness out. Some use milkweeds for 
greens. I like cowslops myself better than milkweed or 
dandelions either. You take a nice mess of cowslop 
greens in the spring, picked before they get in blossom, 
while they're tender, and they're all-fired good." 

" This is fine farm land we're driving through now," 
I suggested. 

" Yes, it's all right. It don't pay for itself, though 
— but then it don't have to. You see that big house 
down there in the trees. Belongs to a New York 
lawyer. He's only got about twenty acres of land, and 
yet he keeps three hired men. They raise some crops 
and take care of a few critters, but mostly they're busy 
just makin' the place look nice. Almost every pretty 
point of land along the shore here has got an expensive 
house on it that some city man has put up, so he can 
amuse himself by making a fad of fancy stock-farming 
or something of the sort. Now we're comin' opposite 
another handsome place. The grounds front on the 
road for half a mile, and the whole distance there's this 
big stone wall. A stone wall's a thing a poor man 
can't afford. It's an expensive fence, no matter how 
you calculate — always tumblin' down, and brush and 
vines always growin' round it. This wall's as well 
built as it could be, but the frost will heave it, and 
every spring a couple of men spend a good many 




Getting Ready to plant his Garden 



The Home of Fenimore Cooper 115 

days repairing of it. When it begins to pitch there 
ain't nothing can save it, and they have to take the 
bad places clean down to the foundation and lay 'em 
over." 

I continued on the lumber wagon not only as far as 
the town, but a mile or two beyond, down a broad, 
fertile farm valley. On the east side of the valley the 
land rose in high slopes checkered with cultivated fields. 
" The farther you go up the hills in that direction," 
said the driver, " the thinner the soil gets, and an 
American couldn't get a livin' off'n it; but there's 
English from across the Atlantic that'll take that 
high scrub land and clear it, and do well. That is, 
they get to own their farms and have money at in- 
terest — though they ain't satisfied no more'n any one 
else." 

We passed several large hop fields, set full of tall 
poles, at the foot of which were green outreachings of 
vines. In one field were two women tying the strag- 
gling stems to the poles. " There ain't only a few got 
at that job yet," remarked the driver. " Hops are a 
great crop in this part of the state, but they ain't lookin' 
first-rate this year — didn't stand the winter well — and 
a good many farmers are ploughing 'em up. They don't 
pay as they used to. The price has been goin' down 
for a long time. You can't get a decent crop unless 
you give up your best medder land to 'em and put 
about all the manure your farm makes on 'em. So 



ii6 New England and its Neighbors 

folks are givin' 'em up and goin' more into dairying. 
There's a cheese factory at the village that they bring 
their milk to, and that pays 'em on an average about 
two cents and a half a quart. 

" The time was when we got considerable money 
out of our woodland, but the best lumber's pretty near 
all gone now. Twenty years ago there was a tannery 
a little below the town. It used a power o' hemlock 
bark, and lots o' farmers would cut their hemlocks and 
peel 'em and let the trees lie and rot. They don't 
waste any good lumber that way any more. The 
tannery went out of business long ago, and the build- 
ing was fixed over into a sawmill. It stands on a 
crick that comes from the hills to the east. That 
crick's about as boisterous a stream of its size as I 
ever see. When we have a big rain it rises right up 
and tears everything all to pieces. At first the saw- 
mill was run by water-power, but the crick carried off 
the dam so often, they finally got tired of rebuilding it 
and put in steam. They burn the old waste to run 
their engine — sawdust and everything — and so it 
don't cost much gettin' up their steam." 

Presently I inquired about the town as it was in 
Cooper's time. " I wish you could 'a' talked with my 
father," was the response. " He knew all about it. 
'Twas just an ordinary little country town — a few 
stores, and a couple o' churches, and two wooden 
taverns, and about all the rest of it was farm-houses. 



The Home of Fenimore Cooper 117 

'Twa'n't built up the way it is at present. I know 
father told how a hill that's now got houses all over it 
was in them days outside the town a hundred rods or 
so, and it was covered with pines. When a horse died 
they'd drag the carcass up there and let it lay, and 




Spring Work in a Farm Field 

think they'd got it well out of the way. They used 
to call that hill ' The Horse Heaven.' 

" I don't think Cooper left his family in very good 
circumstances. His daughters was very nice — real 
ladies, — and they was very charitable, and give away 
an awful sight, so't I do' know but they most suffered 
themselves. They made kind of a hobby out of the 



ii8 New England and its Neighbors 

orphanage here, for one thing. You'd have an idea 
that Cooper's books would bring considerable to the 
family long after he was dead, but they say he sold 
a good many of 'em outright, and after his death there 
wasn't much in money ever come in from 'em." 

Although Cooper's home town is very closely identi- 
fied with him, he did not always reside there, and he 
was a good deal of a rover in his early life. At the 
age of nine he went to Albany, where he attended 
school for four years, and then entered Yale, the next 
to the youngest student in the college. He won no 
laurels at Yale, for the woods and fields possessed for 
him a far keener attraction than books, and his poor 
standing, added to some boyish prank in the third year 
of his course, led to his dismissal. His father now sent 
him to sea before the mast on a merchantman. This 
was intended as a preparation for later going into the 
navy, which he entered as a midshipman at the age of 
nineteen. He served until he was twenty-two, when 
he resigned his commission and married. 

Meanwhile his father had died, and in the family 
home at Cooperstown dwelt his mother and older 
brother. Cooper himself lived in New York, Phila- 
delphia, and other places, and spent the eight years 
preceding 1834 abroad. When he returned, Otsego 
Hall became his permanent residence. The dwelling 
had hitherto been a simple, commodious village house, 
but he remodelled it, added a wooden battlement. 



v-^ 



II 
II 

II 
II 




■7h 








The Monument on the Site of Otsego Hall 



The Home of Fenimore Cooper 119 

threw out porches and projections, changed the win- 
dows to the Gothic style, and gave the whole structure 
an air that bore some resemblance to the ancestral 
home of an English country gentleman. 

Here he kept open house to his friends, cultivated 
his garden, and wrote. Here also he became involved 
in that curious series of lawsuits that resulted in many 
years of bickering. He came back from Europe to 
our raw, new country, and expressed with great frank- 
ness his impressions of his native land, and these were 
not at all flattering — there was so much pretension, 
so much that was crude and ungenuine, and he spoke 
with especial severity of the capricious vulgarity of 
the newspapers. The public, always oversensitive to 
criticism, became more and more irritated. Then came 
the Three Mile Point controversy between Cooper and 
his fellow-townsmen, which brought on a general storm 
of denunciation. 

The Point which caused the disturbance is an attrac- 
tive wooded ledge jutting out into the lake from the 
western shore three miles above Cooperstown. It 
had long been in common use as a picnic ground, 
and the townsfolk had begun to feel that it was pub- 
lic property and that no one had any business to inter- 
fere with their continued appropriation of it. But the 
ownership was in the Cooper family, and the novelist, 
with his aristocratic notions about private estates, ab- 
sorbed during his long residence abroad, wished to have 



I20 New England and its Neighbors 

his ownership recognized. He had no desire to de- 
prive the people of their picnic place. He only wanted 
them to ask such use as a privilege, not take it as a 
right. To effect this end he published a card warning 
the public against trespassing. As a consequence a 
mass meeting was convened, at which it was resolved 
to hold Cooper's threat and his whole conduct " in 
perfect contempt," to have his books removed from 
the village library, and to " denounce any man as a 
sycophant, who has, or shall, ask permission of 
James F. Cooper to visit the Point in question." 

Cooper fought with vigor and persistence what he 
deemed the unreasonableness of his neighbors, but 
his victory was never complete, and he finally dropped 
the matter, and the public used Three Mile Point 
again unconditionally. This was not, however, the 
end of the trouble. It had been given wide notoriety 
by the newspapers, and their comments were so per- 
sonal and offensive that Cooper was stirred to institute 
many libel suits against them. Such was his inde- 
pendence, his pugnaciousness, and quick temper that 
he kept up the warfare for years. Yet this interfered 
but little with the tranquillity of his home life. He 
was closely bound to his family, and was always 
warmly affectionate ; and though he had his enemies, 
he was much liked by those who knew him well, and 
he never failed to win the regard of the men who 
worked for him. Two miles to the north, on the 



The Home of Fenimore Cooper 121 

eastern side of the lake, he bought a farm and built 
on it a cottage of the Swiss type. He named the 
place " The Chalet " and entered with great enjoy- 
ment into the superintendence of clearing and improv- 
ing the land, extracting stumps, setting out trees, 
raising crops, and rearing poultry. He was particu- 
larly interested in his live stock, and the animals knew 
and followed him in recognition of the kindness of his 
treatment. 

It was customary for the family to breakfast at nine, 
dine at three, and have tea at seven in the evening. 
The novelist rose two hours before breakfast and 
began writing, and after the morning meal resumed 
his pen until eleven. The rest of the day was free 
to other pursuits. For recreation he frequently went 
out on the lake in his boat — a skiff with a lug sail. 
This rude little craft went along very well before the 
breeze, but was of not much use in beating to wind- 
ward. It was, however, quite to its owner's liking, 
and was conducive to leisurely contemplation, and in 
it he doubtless thought out many a stirring chapter for 
his books. Cooper never kept a carriage ; a horse and 
buggy sufficed instead and served him when he chose 
to drive up to " The Chalet." This was a trip he 
made nearly every day after he finished his literary 
work, for a stay of two or three hours. 

His habits were methodical, and he seldom allowed 
anything to keep him from his desk during the morn- 



122 New England and its Neighbors 

ing hours. He composed with ease and never lacked 
for words or for subjects ; yet authorship was in his 
case purely an accident, and he was thirty when he 
began his first book. This book was the outcome of 
his remarking to his wife one evening as he threw 
down impatiently a recent novel he had been reading 
aloud, " I could write you a better book myself" 

She laughed at the absurdity of the idea and 
challenged him to undertake the task. Hitherto he 
had disliked even to write a letter, but now he set 
arduously to work and finished several chapters. Then 
he would have quit had not his wife become interested 
and urged him on; and presently " Precaution " was 
not only finished, but published. It was merely an 
imitation of the average English story of fashionable 
life. Yet it revealed to Cooper an unexpected capacity, 
and he at once began a thoroughly original Ameri- 
can story — " The Spy," which has been called " the 
first brilliantly successful romance" published in this 
country. 

Cooper's death occurred in 1851, and his wife sur- 
vived him only a few months. Otsego Hall was then 
sold, an extra story was added, and it was turned 
into a hotel. A heavy insurance was placed on the 
property and with very little delay it burned, after a 
manner that heavily insured buildings sometimes have 
of doing. The site of the old Hall is now a pleasing 
park, and where the house stood is a striking monu- 



The Home of Fenimore Cooper 



123 



ment, but it seems a pity the house itself could not 
have been preserved just as Cooper left it. The 
novelist lies buried in the tree-shadowed quiet of a 
near churchyard, and the much-worn path to his grave, 
trodden by thousands of pilgrim feet, attests his abid- 
ing fame. 




The Graves of J. Fenimore Cooper 



lb Wife 



VI 



AN HISTORIC TOWN IN CONNECTICUT 



F^f'^1//^^'^^ 




M 



Y acquaint- 
ance with 
Say brook 
began rather unpro- 
pitiously at its one 
hotel. This was a 
shapeless yellow 
structure, evidently an 
old residence some- 
what remodelled and 
enlarged. Its busiest 
portion was the bar- 
room adorned with 
a heavy cherry coun- 
ter and an imposing 
''Sf ^.:^_..J array of bottles on 
Setting out the House-plants the shelves behind. 

When I entered the adjoining office, several men were 
in the bar-room running over their vocabularies of 
swear words in a high-voiced dispute ; and in the office 

124 



An Historic Town in Connecticut 



125 



itself sat two young fellows drowsing in drunken stu- 
por. The whole place was permeated with the odors 




Saybrook Street 

of liquor and with tobacco fumes, both recent and of 
unknown antiquity. 

But if the aspect of local life as seen at the hotel 
was depressing, the village, on the evening I arrived, 
was to my eyes quite entrancing. In the May twilight 
I walked from end to end of the long chief street. 
The birds were singing, and from the seaward marshes 
came the piping of the frogs and the purring monotone 
of the toads. Lines of great elms and sugar maples 
shadowed the walks, and the latter had blossomed so 
that every little twig had its tassels of delicate yellow- 
green, and a gentle fragrance filled the air. Among 



126 New England and its Neighbors 

other trees, a trifle retired, were many pleasant homes of 
the plain but handsome and substantial type in vogue 
about a century ago. In short, the place furnished an 
admirable example of the old New England country 
town, and imparted a delightful sense of repose and 
comfort. 

The most incongruous feature of the village was an 
abnormal, modern schoolhouse that in its decorative 
trickery matched nothing else on the street. From this 
it was a relief to turn to the white, square-towered old 
church neighboring, which gave itself no airs and cut no 
capers with architectural frills and fixings. On its front 
was a bronze plate informing the reader that here was 

THE FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST 

IN SAYBROOK 

ORGANIZED 

IN "the great hall" of THE FORT 

IN THE SUMMER OF 1646 

Thus it was one of the earliest founded churches in 
the commonwealth. 

An odd thing about the town, and one that rather 
offset its sentiment of antiquity, was the omnipresence 
of bicycles. Everybody — old and young, male and 
female — rode this thoroughly modern contrivance. 
Pedestrianism had apparently gone out of fashion, and 
I got the idea that the children learned to ride a wheel 
before they began to walk. 



An Historic Town in Connecticut 127 

Another odd thing was that the village looked 
neither agricultural nor suburban. It is in truth the 
dwelling-place of a country aristocracy possessed of a 
good deal of wealth, and labor is not very strenuous. 
The people are content if they have sufficient capital 
safely invested to return them a comfortable living and 
save them the necessity for undue exertion. Yet, to 
quote a native, " They are nothing hke as rich as they 
were fifty years ago." 

Much money has been lost in one way and another. 
The decrease, however, is more due to removals and 
to the division of large individual properties among 
several heirs. But, whatever the ups and downs of 
fortune, the town apparently changes slowly, and the 
inhabitants cling to the customs of their forefathers. 
One evidence of this was the retention of miles and 
miles of unnecessary fences about the dwellings, some 
of them of close boards, suggestive of monastic seclu- 
siveness. 

The oldest house In the town that still presents in 
the main its original aspect dates back to 1665. It is 
painted a dingy yellow, and has a high front, from 
which the rear roof takes a long slant downward, until 
the eaves are within easy reach, and you have to stoop 
to go in at the back door. The windows have the 
tiny panes of the time when the dwelHng was erected. 
The rooms all have warped floors, and low ceilings 
"crossed by great beams ; and the heavy vertical timbers 



128 New England and its Neighbors 

assert themselves in the corners. The upper story has 
only two apartments finished. As was usual in houses 
of this kind, the rest was left simply garret space bare 
to the rafters. In the heart of the structure is an 
enormous chimney that on the ground floor takes up 
the space of a small room. There are fireplaces on 
three sides, but their days of service are past, though 
they never have been closed except with fireboards. 




in a Back Yard 

At the rear of the house, under an apple tree, were 
two vinegar barrels, each of which had an inverted 
bottle stuck in the bung-hole. The contents of the 
barrels, in their cider state, had been allowed to freeze 
and then were drained off. A highly concentrated 
beverage was in this manner obtained, much esteemed 



An Historic Town in Connecticut 129 

by the well-seasoned cider-lover. I was offered a 
chance to make the acquaintance of the liquor, yet not 
without warning that, as it was almost pure alcohol, 
there was some danger of overdoing the matter. 

To the north of the town one does not have to fol- 
low the highways far to encounter country that, with 
all the years passed since the settlement of the region, 
is still only half tamed. Here are rocky hills, brushy 
pastures, and rude stone walls overgrown with poison 
ivy. Many of the homes are ancient and dilapidated 
and the premises strewn with careless litter. Work is 
carried on in a primitive fashion. A landowner of 
this district with whom I talked affirmed that farm- 
ing did not pay, and the reason he gave was the com- 
petition of the West — it had knocked the bottom out 
of prices. 

I wondered if there were not other reasons. He was 
furrowing out a half-acre patch on which he intended 
to plant potatoes. His hired man was leading the horse 
while he himself held the plough-handles. It seemed 
to me his patch was not large enough to work eco- 
nomically with a view to profit, and that the profit was 
also being dissipated by having two men do work that 
might be done by one. Down the slope was a long 
stretch of marshes that swept away to the sea, with a 
muddy-banked creek wandering through the \evd. 
The man said he would cut salt hay on these marshes 
later in the year, and as the soil was too boggy to bear 



ijo New England and its Neighbors 

the weight of a horse, not only would the mowing have 
to be done by hand, but he and his helper would be 
obliged to carry the hay to firm land between them on 
poles. Here, again, it was not easy to discern much 




Ploughing out tor Potatoes 

chance for profit. The process was too laborious 
where the product was of so little value. Then, at the 
man's home, I noted that the stable manure lay leach- 
ing in the sun and rain, unprotected by any roof, that 
the mowing-machine and other tools were scattered 
about the yard accumulating rust, and that things 
in general looked careless and easy-going. I did 
not wonder he took a pessimistic view of farming. 

The places of many of his neighbors were akin to 
his, and as a whole this outlying district seemed a piece 



An Historic Town in Connecticut 



131 



out of the past when farming was done by main strength, 
and brains and method and science were quite secondary. 
This old-fashioned aspect was further emphasized by 
the presence of an occasional slow ox-team toiling in 
the fields, and now and then an antiquated well-sweep 
in a dooryard. 

A well-sweep was an adjunct of one house in the town 
itself — a gray, square little house far gone in decay. 
Lights were missing from the windows, clapboards were 
dropping off, blinds were dilapidated or gone altogether, 
and the outbuildings had either fallen and been used for 
stove wood, or were on the verge of ruin. The shed 
used as a hen-house leaned at a perilous slant. Near 




A Roadway on the Sayhrook Outskirts 

it was a scanty pile of wood and a sawhorse made by 
nailing a couple of sticks crosswise on the end of a box 
so that the tops projected above the box level and 



132 New England and its Neighbors 

formed a crotch. Along the street walk staggered a 
decrepit picket fence with a sagging gate. The yard 
was a chaos of weeds and riotous briers, and the place 
looked mysterious — as if it had a history — perhaps 
was haunted. 

A tiny path led around to the back door, so slightly 
trodden I was in doubt whether the house was inhab- 
ited or not until I saw a bent old woman coming 
from the grass field at the rear of the premises. On 
her head she wore a sunbonnet of ancient type and 
over her shoulders a faded shawl. She was hobbling 
slowly along with the help of a cane, and bore on her 
arm a basket with a few dandelion greens in the bottom. 
1 stood leaning on the fence, hoping chance would give 
me an opportunity to know more about this strange 
house; and to avoid an appearance of staring I now 
looked the other way. But my loitering had attracted 
the woman's attention, and, instead of going into the 
house, she set her basket on the back door-step and 
came feebly down the path and spoke to me. She was 
a mild-eyed, kindly old soul, and in the chat which 
followed I learned that she was eighty years old and 
that her brother, aged seventy-six, the only other mem- 
ber of the household, was a "joiner." Presently I 
asked about some of the garden flowers which had 
survived in their neglected struggle with weeds and 
brambles. 

"They need the old woman," she said, "but I'm 



An Historic Town in Connecticut 133 

most past such work now. My lameness is getting 
worse. I have it every winter, and it doesn't leave 
me until warm weather comes. I shall have to get 
my brother to hoe some here. He isn't much for 
taking care of flowers, but he likes 'em as well as any 
one, and if he's going to make a call, he'll pick a 
bunch to carry along. I used to have more kinds, 
and I'd keep some of 'em in the house through the 
winter, but when I did that I had to see the fire didn't 
go out nights, and it got too hard for me." 

" What are those white flowers spreading all through 
the grass ? " I inquired. 

" Those are myrtle — white myrtle. Want one?" 

My reply was affirmative, and I was invited into the 
yard. I picked a myrtle blossom and the old woman 
said, " You can have more just as well." 

" Thank you, one will do ; and what are these little 
flowers at my feet ? " 

" Those are bluebottles. I got the first plants from 
my cousin's up in Tolland County. Want one ? " 

" Yes, I believe I would like one." 

"Take more if you care to." 

" No, I'd rather have just the one. Here are some 
pink flowers in a bunch. What are they ? " 

" Those are polyanthus. You can have a root to 
take home with you if you can carry it." 

Thus our talk rambled on, while we considered 
double violets, " daffies," bloodroot, mandrakes, 



134 New England and its Neighbors 

" chiny asters," tiger lilies, " pineys," tulips, hyacinths, 
etc. The garden had formerly been very tidy, and I 
could trace its decorative arrangement of beds and 
paths. The borders of the beds were outlined with 
rows of big " winkle " shells which the brother had 
brought up from the seashore a mile or two distant, 
where he sometimes went " clamming and oystering." 

Close about the house were blue and yellow lilies, 
bunches of ferns, and a good deal of shrubbery, includ- 
ing roses, a "honeysuckle" bush, and a tall " lilack." 
This last carried its blossoms so high that they were 
far beyond the woman's reach as she stood on the 
ground, and she only picked such as she could gather 
from an upper window. Near the back door was a 
big butternut tree, and a grape-vine overrunning a 
shaky trellis. Here, too, was the well-sweep with its 
rickety curb and its oaken bucket. 

I was made welcome to step inside the house and 
see the old dwelling, but I did not find it especially 
interesting. The barren, cluttered rooms, with their 
suggestion of extreme poverty, were depressing. In 
the parlor, which was used as a sort of storeroom, were 
a number of antiquated pictures on the walls, most of 
them in heavy frames that the woman had contrived 
herself — some of cones, some of shells stuck in putty. 
The cones and shells varied much in size and kind, 
and the patterns were intricate and ingenious. Then 
there was a specimen of hair work, dusty and moth- 




Drawing a Bucket of Watlr 



An Historic Town in Connecticut 135 

eaten, which she took out of its frame that I might in- 
spect it closer. " I used to be quite a hand making these 
sort of things," she explained, " but now I don't have 
the time. It's about all I can do to get enough to 
eat. 

I came away wondering what the trouble was that 
the brother and sister were so poorly provided for in 
their old age, and when I inquired about it I was told 
that the brother was " one of the smartest men in 
Connecticut," an architect and builder of great ability, 
but " he had looked through the bottom of a glass too 
often." 

The most historic portion of Saybrook is what is 
known as " The Point," a seaward-reaching projection a 
half-mile across, connected with the mainland by a nar- 
row neck. Here the first settlers established themselves 
in 1635. ^^^ leaders who had planned this settlement 
had in October of that year reached Boston from across 
the sea. In Boston they collected twenty men, hired 
a small vessel, and about the middle of November 
posted off for the mouth of the Connecticut. They 
brought with them materials for the erection of houses 
to accommodate both themselves and others who were 
to follow ; and they were prepared to construct a fort, 
in part to prevent the Dutch, who aspired to control 
the river, from accomplishing their purpose, and in 
part to defend themselves against the Indians. 

They arrived none too soon ; for a few days after 



136 New England and its Neighbors 

they landed, a vessel from New Amsterdam appeared 
offshore with intent to take possession of the region 
and build fortifications. Luckily the English had 
mounted a couple of cannon, and the Dutch thought 
best to return peaceably whence they had come. 
Winter soon set in, and the settlers could do little 
beforehand save to provide themselves with shelters 
of the most primitive kind. In the spring work was 
taken up in earnest, and other settlers came ; but for a 
long time the colony grew very slowly, and the earliest 
years were years of annual struggle with the stubborn 
earth and the hard winters. One of the first tasks of 
the pioneers was to build a wooden fort and to set up 
a line of palisades twelve feet high across the neck of 
the peninsula. Like all the early towns, Saybrook 
suffered at the hands of the Indians. A number of 
its inhabitants were slain in the immediate vicinity, and 
the cows sometimes returned from the pasture with 
arrows sticking in their sides. 

By 1647, while the population was still less than 
one hundred, a church was erected. Up to that time 
the meetings had been held in what the records speak 
of as "the great hall" of the fort. The church stood 
at one end of a public square called " The Green." 
To assemble the people for service a drum was beaten, 
and it was voted that at the front door of the church 
should be " a gard of 8 men every Sabbath and 
Lecture-day compleat in their arms." A sentinel, too, 



An Historic Town in Connecticut ijy 

was stationed on a turret or platform built on the 
meeting-house roof. The necessity of this protection 
against savage assaults is seen when one remembers 
that an average of over fourscore English are esti- 
mated to have been slain yearly by the Indians during 
the first half-century of Connecticut's settlement. 




In the Old Cemcici y 

This seems distressing enough, but from an Indian 
viewpoint the slaughter was far worse ; for twenty of 
their number were killed to one of the whites. 

A second meeting-house was completed in 1681 
near the site of the first. Of this structure it is known 
that the seats in the body of the house were plain 
wooden benches assigned to members of the congrega- 



138 New England and its Neighbors 

tion according to age, rank, office, and estate. Several 
leading men were given permission to build square 
pews against the walls of the audience room, and the 
minister's family had a square pew at the right of the 
pulpit. The pulpit itself was a high, angular construc- 
tion furnished with a Geneva Bible, a " Bay Psalm 
Book," and an hour-glass with which to time the service. 
The two deacons faced the congregation, sitting on a 
seat at the base of the pulpit, and the tithing-man, 
with his fox-tail rod of office, took his position where 
he could best oversee the behavior of the worshippers. 
The original settlement at Saybrook Point about the 
fort gradually overflowed to the mainland, until pres- 
ently the centre of population and chief village were a 
mile or two from the earlier hamlet. Thus, when the 
third church was built, in 1726, at a cost of sixteen hun- 
dred dollars, a new and more generally convenient loca- 
tion was chosen. Until near the end of the century this 
edifice had no steeple and no bell. After these were 
added it was customary, down to 1840, to ring the bell 
every noon to announce to the people the arrival of the 
dinner hour. The bell was also rung during the winter 
at nine in the evening as a notification it was bedtime. 
Neither of the previous churches were ever warmed, nor 
was this for more than one hundred years. The chief 
feature of the interior was the high pulpit, overhung 
by a huge sounding-board, both much elaborated with 
panels and mouldings. On Sunday the pulpit stairs 



An Historic Town in Connecticut 139 

were filled by small boys, who were always eager to get 
the upper step, fi3r this position gave the occupant the 
honor of opening the pulpit door to the minister when 
he ascended to his place. The pews were square, with 
seats on three sides, so that a portion of the worshippers 
sat with sides or backs to the preacher. A wide, heavy 
gallery extended clear around the room except on the 
north, where rose the pulpit. The east wing of the 
gallery was exclusively for females, the west for males. 
The front tier of seats was reserved for the singers. 
Behind them, on the south side, were four box pews re- 
garded by many as most desirable sittings. Some of the 
young people of both sexes found these especially attrac- 
tive, though more because the seclusion was adapted 
for social purposes than because of any religious ardor. 
Finally, in each of the remote rear corners of the gal- 
lery was still another box pew for the occupancy of the 
colored people, who were not allowed to sit elsewhere. 
Perhaps Say brook's strongest appeal to fame is the 
fact that the town was the first domicile of Yale Uni- 
versity, It was characteristic of the settlers of New 
England, that no sooner had they set up their houses on 
American soil than they began to make provision for the 
education of their children. Not content with estab- 
lishing primary schools, they founded Harvard College 
within seven years of the settlement of Boston. Con- 
necticut, in proportion to its population and means, 
bore its full share in Harvard's support ; but after the 



140 New England and its Neighbors 

lapse of some fifty years the people of the colony be- 
gan to feel the need of having a collegiate school of 
their own. The idea took definite form at a meeting 
of Connecticut pastors in September, 1701, when each 
one present made a gift of books to the proposed 
college. 

The infant institution, which, in honor of a generovis 
benefactor, subsequently took the name of Yale, was 
thus started, and shortly a citizen of Saybrook gave it 
the use of a house and lot. This house was quite 
sufficient, for during the first six months the college 
community consisted of the president and a single 
student, and only fifty-five young men were graduated 
in fifteen years. The trustees were far from unani- 
mous in locating the college at Saybrook, and its 
affairs continued in an unsettled state until 17 16, when 
it was transferred to New Haven. The change was 
not accomplished without turmoil, a curious account 
of which is found in the Rev. Samuel Peters's "General 
History of Connecticut," published in 1781. He 
says: — 

" A vote passed at Hartford, to remove the College 
to Weathersfield ; and another at Newhaven, that it 
should be removed to that town. Hartford, in order 
to carry its vote into execution, prepared teams, boats, 
and a mob, and privately set off for Saybrook, and 
seized upon the College apparatus, library and students, 
and carried all to Weathersfield. This redoubled the 




Cleaning up the Back Yard 



An Historic Town in Connecticut 141 

jealousy of the saints at Newhaven, who thereupon 
determined to fulfil their vote ; and accordingly, having 
collected a mob sufficient for the enterprise, they set 
out for Weathersfield, where they seized by surprise the 
students, library, &c. &c. But on the road to New- 
haven, they were overtaken by the Hartford mob, 
who, however, after an unhappy battle, were obliged 
to retire with only a part of the library and part of the 
students. The quarrel increased daily, everybody 
expecting a war ; and no doubt such would have been 
the case had not the peacemakers of Massachusetts 
Bay interposed with their usual friendship, and advised 
their dear friends of Hartford to give up the College 
to Newhaven. This was accordingly done to the great 
joy of the crafty Massachusetts, who always greedily 
seek their own prosperity, though it ruin their best 
neighbors. 

" The College being thus fixed forty miles further 
west from Boston than it was before, tended greatly to 
the interest of Harvard College ; for Saybrook and 
Hartford, out of pure grief, sent their sons to Harvard, 
instead of the College at Newhaven." 

Another anecdote related by Mr. Peters has to do 
with the visit of the evangelist George Whitefield to 
Saybrook in 1740. "Time not having destroyed the 
walls of the fort," says the narrative, " Mr. Whitefield 
attempted to bring them down, as Joshua brought 
down the walls of Jericho, to convince the gaping 



142 New England and its Neighbors 

multitude of his divine mission. He walked several 
times round the fort with prayer, and rams'-horns 
blowing ; he called on the angel of Joshua ; but the 
angel was deaf or on a journey or asleep, and therefore 
the walls remained. Hereupon George cried aloud: 
' This town is accursed for not receiving the messenger 
of the Lord ; therefore the angel is departed and the 
walls shall stand as a monument of sinful people.' 
He shook off the dust of his feet against them, and 
departed." 

The author of the " General History " was a Royalist 
clergyman driven by persecution from the colonies 
early in the Revolution. He writes with a certain 
amount of sarcasm and bitterness, yet the book is 
by no means wholly condemnatory. He apparently 
attempts to be fair, though his own experience and his 
affinity with the English Church gives a bias to his 
opinions. The part of his book which has been most 
severely criticised is where he gives a list of Connecti- 
cut " blue laws, that is bloody laws," which he affirms 
were strenuously enforced though never printed, and 
those who transgressed them were punished with 
excommunication, fines, banishment, whippings, ear- 
chopping, tongue-burning, and even death. I quote 
only a few of these alleged blue laws. 

" No one shall run on the Sabbath-day, or walk in 
his garden or elsewhere, except reverently to and from 
meeting. 



An Historic Town in Connecticut 143 

" No one shall kiss her child on the Sabbath or 
fasting-day. 

" The Sabbath shall begin at sunset on Saturday. 

" Whoever wears cloathes trimmed with gold, silver, 
or bone lace, above two shillings by the yard, shall be 
presented by the grand jurors. 

" A debtor in prison, swearing he has no estate shall 
be let out and sold to make satisfaction. 

" Whoever brings cards or dice into this dominion 
shall pay a fine of 5/. 

" No one shall read Common-Prayer, keep Christ- 
mas or Saints-days, make minced pies, dance, play 
cards, or play on any instrument of music, except the 
drum, trumpet, and jewsharp. 

" No man shall court a maid in person, or by letter, 
without first obtaining the consent of her parents. 

" Every male shall have his hair cut round according 
to a cap." 

This last law, Mr. Peters says, was the cause of all 
New Englanders being given the nickname of "pump- 
kin-heads." It frequently was convenient, he adds, 
when caps were lacking, to substitute the hard shell 
of a pumpkin, " which being put on the head every 
Saturday, the hair is cut by the shell all round the 
head." The author's comment is that there is much 
"prudence" in this method of hair-trimming, for: "first, 
it prevents the hair from snarling ; secondly, it saves 
the use of combs, bags, and ribbons ; thirdly, the hair 



144 l^ew England and its Neighbors 

cannot incommode the eyes by falHng over them ; and 
fourthly, such persons as have lost their ears for heresy 
and other wickedness, cannot conceal their misfortune 
and disgrace." 

Other paragraphs from the "General History" pur- 
porting to show the life of early Connecticut are 
these : — 

" On Saturday evenings the people look sour and 
sad ; on the Sabbath they appear to have lost their 
dearest friends, and are almost speechless ; they 
walk softly ; they even observe it with more exact- 
ness than did the Jews. A Quaker preacher told 
them with much truth that they worshipped the Sab- 
bath, and not the God of the Sabbath. These hos- 
pitable people, without charity, condemned the Quaker 
as a blasphemer of the holy Sabbath, fined, tarred and 
feathered him, put a rope about his neck, and plunged 
him into the sea, but he escaped with life, though he 
was about seventy years of age. 

" In 1750 an Episcopal clergyman, born and edu- 
cated in England, who had been in holy orders above 
twenty years, once broke their sabbatical law by comb- 
ing a discomposed lock of hair on the top of his wig ; 
at another time for making a humming noise, which 
they call whistling ; at a third, by running into church 
when it rained; at a fourth, by walking in his 
garden and picking a bunch of grapes: for which 
several crimes he had warrants granted against him. 



An Historic Town in Connecticut 145 

was seized, brought to trial, and paid a considerable 
sum of money. 

"Smuggling is rivetted in the constitution and 
practice of the inhabitants of Connecticut as much as 
superstition and religion, and their province is a 
storehouse for the smugglers of the neighboring col- 
onies. They conscientiously study to cheat the King 
of those duties which they say God and Nature never 
intended should be paid. From the Governor down 
to the tithing-man who are sworn to support the laws, 
they will aid smugglers, resist collectors, and mob 
informers." 

The writer's view of the colonial clergy is far from 
flattering. When a church gives a man a call and 
states the salary and other inducements, the prospec- 
tive pastor, "after looking round him and finding no 
better terms offered from any other parish, answers in 
this manner, ' Brethren and friends, I have considered 
your call, and, after many fastings and prayers, I find it 
to be a call of God, and close with your ofi^er.' " 

The pastor's manner of visiting persons who are ill 
is described thus : " The minister demands of the sick 
if he be converted, when, and where. If the answer is 
conformable to the system of the minister, it is very 
well ; if not, the sick is given over as a non-elect and 
no object of prayer. Another minister is then sent 
for, who asks the sick if he be willing to die, if he be 
willing to be damned, if it please God to damn him .? 



146 



New England and its Neighbors 



Should he answer No, this minister quits him, as the 
former. Finally the sick man dies, and so falls out 
of their hands into better," 

In all this a touch of exaggeration is evident, yet 
there is enough of fact and of human nature behind 
it to make the reader enjoy its spice, and the narrative 
is far from unpalatable — at least to readers who are not 
natives of Connecticut. 




The Seaward Marshlands 



VII 



A JAUNT ON LONG ISLAND 



V ■ - 




Starting the Garden Parsnips 



F 



ROM New 
York, one hot 
day in May, I 
journeyed almost the 
full length of Long 
Island's low levels ; 
and so utterly lacking 
were hills and vales 
that I could not help 
fancying the entire 
isle had originally 
been mere mud flats, 
the delta of some 
great river. The soil 
was evidently mellow 
and easily cultivated, 
and I had glimpses 
from the car windows 



of many prosperous-looking market-garden farms ; but 
not less characteristic were the monotonous stretches 



147 



148 New England and its Neighbors 

of waste lands growing to pines and scrubby oaks. 
These were often uninterrupted for miles, and when a 
break occurred, it was only to allow for a village oasis 
with a ragged skirting of fields, and then the dwarfish 
forest swept on again. The woods were dry, and truant 
fires were burning in them, sometimes so near I could 
see the low, irregular lines of the flames, sometimes 
distant and only made apparent by a cloud-drift of 
yellow smoke. 

I went as far as Easthampton, a place I had selected 
for my destination solely because I had heard there 
were windmills in or near it — not our ugly modern 
ones, with angular skeleton frames and a whirligig of 
shutters at the top, but those of the portly Dutch 
type, that spread to the wind long, white-sailed arms. 
To harmonize with these windmills I had in mind an 
old-fashioned rural town, in whose quiet the past would 
seem more real than the present. I was disappointed. 
The town has been invaded by the city people, and is 
suburban rather than rural, and the old survives only 
in nooks and corners ; and yet the place is beautiful. 
It has a straight, broad, two-mile street, lined with well- 
grown elms, and where the early town centre had been 
the street widens into a grassy common. The sea lies 
just beyond sight, hidden by a bulwark of dunes, but 
its mufiied roar along the beach can be distinctly heard. 

The common at one end dips down to a muddy 
pond, and on the steep, short slope rising east of the 




A Long Island Stile 



A Jaunt on Long Island 149 

pond is a cemetery of lowly gray stones. As soon as 
you pass across the burial-ground you find a windmill 
— a great octagon, with unpainted, shingled sides, and 
four wide-reaching arms. The windwill fulfilled my 
ideal very satisfactorily, and its situation adjoining the 
ancient cemetery was charming. All it lacked was 
motion, and I learned with regret it was not likely to 
have that for several days. 

" These mills don't grind much but hog feed," said 
my informant, " and there ain't but mighty little busi- 
ness doing at this season. The West raises our grain 
supplies now and we buy 'em ready ground, but the 
windmills used to be pretty important institutions. 
You see there ain't any water-power worth mentioning 
in this flat country, and in the old advertisements when 
a place was for sale they'd mention how far it was from 
a windmill, just as they would at present from the post 
office and railroad." 

At the very end of the street to the north was 
another windmill, and on a side way was a third, minus 
arms, while a fourth, that looked outwardly the best 
of all, stood in the back yard of a gentleman's place. 
This last mill, however, was only a delusion — a fad of 
its city owner. It was naught but an imitation shell, 
fitted up to serve as a home for a hired man, and its 
great arms never bore sails, nor could the wind coax 
them into motion even when it blew a hurricane. 

Of the evolution of the town into what it is at 



150 New England and its Neighbors 

present I received a most entertaining view from a 
man I accosted who was scratching up leaves and rub- 
bish by the path side in front of his premises with 
a rake. He was in no haste, and talking seemed to 
suit him rather better than the work in hand, 

" It's twenty-seven years ago that the first city 
family rented a house here," said he. " Now the 
town is become one of the city people's resorts, and 
it's full of houses they have either put up or that they 
rent. Their houses are built in city style, and the old 
farm-houses have about all been done away with or so 
made over you wouldn't know 'em. Yes, farming's 
dying out, and I expect soon you won't see a load of 
manure go through the street in a whole season. 

"The original inhabitants find themselves swallowed 
up in the deluge, and I must say we're a little dis- 
mayed at the transformation. We're old-fashioned 
enough not to quite like it. We used to do as we 
pleased. There was a time when, if we thought a 
person needed a coat of tar and feathers, we saw that 
he had it. 'Twouldn't be allowed now. The city 
people are getting so that they direct all our ways — 
almost tell us when to go to bed and when to get up 
in the morning. 

" I rent my house from the middle of June to the 
middle of October for six hundred dollars. Some o' 
the neighbors rent theirs for less, others for more, even 
up to twenty-five hundred. I have to move out when 



A Jaunt on Long Island 151 

the city folks come, but that little house you see in 
back there is good enough for me ; and I sell the 
renters chickens, eggs, and garden truck, and it ain't 
much trouble to make a living. There's more money 
in renting than there is in taking boarders. Boarding 
ain't fashionable here. I'll tell you why. One o' 
these city women that has stopped here makes a call 
there in New York, and says she spent last summer 
down at Easthampton. 

" ' Did you, and what cottage did you have ? ' says 
the other. 

" ' Oh, we didn't have a cottage. We boarded.' 
" ' M-m-m, ah ! Well, you needn't call any more.' 
" At least that's what it amounts to. There's a good 
deal of caste feeling, and renters don't want to associate 
too freely with boarders. I expect pretty soon they 
won't go in bathing here on the beach at the same place. 
" We've had a great excitement in the town the last 
few months over a kind of epidemic of sickness. Our 
two doctors don't agree what it is, and one of 'em has 
doctored for typhoid and the other for malaria. Neither 
of 'em has lost a patient, and the undertaker has been 
kicking all winter because the people didn't die faster 
— said he couldn't make a living the way things were 
going. Well, the town is rent in twain, and each doc- 
tor has his party. There's most feeling though against 
the typhoid man. You see the promulgation of his 
theory would tend to keep the city people away. 



152 New England and its Neighbors 



" We couldn't stand that. They're the mainstay of 
the town, because, as I said, farming's pretty much 
played out. It used to be different, and you have no 





On Easthampton Common 

idea what crops we'd raise. The soil's nothing to brag 
of, but we'd put on enormous quantities of bunkers ; 
that's a kind of fish — I suppose you know what they 
are. We could go down to the sea anywhere and drag 
in our seines full of them bunkers, and then we'd cover 
the land till it glistened all over with 'em ; and how 
they would stink ! I can remember times when, on a 
hot Sunday, we'd have to close the meeting-house 
windows to keep out the stench. 

" I wish that meeting-house was here now. It was 



A Jaunt on Long Island 153 

a handsome old church, but it got too small, and 
instead of enlarging it, they must build a new one in 
up-to-date style. You can see the doorstone of the old 
church yet, embedded in the sidewalk down below here 
a ways. There's a curious story of how the building 
happened to be put in that particular place. The 
townspeople had been having a great dispute as to 
where it should stand, and they couldn't arrive at any 
agreement. So they had to get three disinterested men 
to come from towns around to decide. It was winter, 
and each man was lodged with a different family. 
Well, the three men were to get together in the even- 
ing to talk over the matter ; and after supper, about the 
time it got dark, one of 'em sent word to the others 
where they were to meet by a colored girl that worked 
in the house he was staying at. The night was stormy 
— snow and cold and a high wind — and it was too 
much for the girl. They found her next day dead in 
a drift, and on the spot where she died the three men 
decided the church should stand, and not a person 
in town dissented." 

At this point in my companion's discourse a young 
woman came along and accosted him with, " Oh, father, 
where do you think I've been ? " 

" I don't know. Where have you ? " said he. 

" Over to Mr. Delancey's house. He invited me 
in to see the paper he's put on the hall, and I told him 
just what I thought. ' I ain't stuck on it at all,' I said." 



154 New England and its Neighbors 

" This gentleman is interested in old times," re- 
marked her father, indicating me. 

"Are you?" said she. "It's too bad old Lew 
Dudley ain't alive. He knew more about old times 
than all the rest of the town put together." 

" I don't suppose he would have talked with a stran- 
ger, he was so cranky," commented the father. 

" He was a queer old codger," continued the young 
woman, " and he got worse than ever in his later years 
while he was living all by his lone ; and what a man 
he was for lawsuits ! He never could do business 
without suing to get his rights. Then he was a great 
hand for marrying. Gee ! it was astonishing the num- 
ber of wives he had, one after the other. Some died 
and some got divorced. One of 'em died when I was 
a little girl, and I remember they kept the body a week 
or ten days. She looked so natural they weren't sure 
but she was alive. The wife he had last didn't stay 
with him only by spells. She was a city woman, and 
she got lonesome here and had to go off to New York 
every once in a while, to keep from perishing. They 
had a regular cat and dog time of it anyway, and once 
Old Lew came to our house with a paper he wanted 
us to sign. I read it and it made out his wife was 
crazy, and I said, ' You bring a paper that says you're 
both crazy, and I'll sign that quick.' Well, I must 
be going." 

When the daughter turned away, the man with the 



A Jaunt on Long Island 



^SS 



rake pointed to a fine old colonial dwelling not far 
away, high in front and low behind, with a great chim- 
ney. " That," said he, " is the house which inspired 
' Home, Sweet Home.' It is the birthplace of John 
Howard Payne." 

I looked at the structure more closely, later, and 
found its air of repose and rustic simplicity quite in 
accord with the sentiment of the famous verses ; but 
a dwelling that interested me more was the " Dan 




The " Home, Sweet Home" House 

Watkins House " on the town outskirts. It was 
ancient and gray, with shingled sides and many odd 
projections and angles. In the dooryard, amidst other 
wreckage, was an old surf boat with a broken prow. 
I ventured into the yard, and a bevy of geese sounded 
the alarm. When I did not retreat they came honk- 



156 New England and its Neighbors 

ing up to me, and the gander made a personal exami- 
nation, nosing me over, nibbling at my shoes, and 
showing decided marks of disapproval. Behind the 
house was a long garden enclosed by a shaky picket 
fence. As I approached, a tattered old man rose from 
his knees, where he had been carefully sowing with his 
fingers a row of parsnips. He wore spectacles and 
had a white, bushy beard. 

" Them geese ain't very polite," said he. "They 
got queer ideas o' their importance, and kind o' boss 
this whole place. Sometimes I don't know whether I 
keep the geese or they keep me. There's one thing 
about 'em, though — they're better' n any watch-dog 
I ever see. Can't nobody come around here but they 
know it. Take it the middle o' the night, it's just the 
same. Everything'll be all quiet, and at the least lit- 
tle noise they'll speak right out as if they were awake 
all the time. You know that old story about the geese 
saving Rome from the enemy by giving warning. I 
ain't a bit of doubt but what that was so." 

Where the man was at work he had a line stretched 
between two stakes to guide him in making his rows 
straight. He had been putting in a variety of seeds, 
and at the end of each little plot had set up a twig 
with the seed envelope on top to indicate what 
was planted there. He was doing a very neat job. 
Through the middle of the garden ran a row of peren- 
nials — rhubarb, sage, white raspberries, and currants. 



A Jaunt on Long Island 157 

" I have a good min' to root out those currants," the 
old man remarked, " I'm so dretful pestered with 
the worms. I've put on hellebore till I'm tired, and 
the worms get the best of me every year. I don't care 
much for currants anyway. My white raspberries I 
favor more, though I have to be everlastingly fightin' 
all the time to keep 'em from spreadin' over every- 
thing. They furnish me all the berries I want myself, 
and I let the neighbors pick 'em, too." 

" I suppose your house is one of the oldest in town," 
said I. 

" Oh, law, no ! This is a new house. It was only 
built one hundred and forty years ago. Easthampton's 
got houses two hundred years old and over." 

He had come out of the garden now and was getting 
a drink at his pump. This pump was close by the 
back door, a venerable and clumsy affair made of 
white ash logs which he affirmed had been bored and 
put in three-quarters of a century before. " I don't 
want anything better'n that pump and that water," he 
continued, as he hung the tin cup back on its nail. 
" They're talkin' about havin' waterworks with pipes 
run into every house, but I won't let 'em come in 
here." 

" Have you a farm ? " I inquired. 

"No, I ain't a farmer. I'm an old watchmaker; 
but I do carpentering and other things, too ; and there 
was a time when I pulled teeth and took daguerro- 



158 New England and its Neighbors 

types. You come into the house and I'll show you 
where I work." 

He conducted me first to a black little room, its 
sides and ceiling lined with tools and pieces of wood 
and iron of all kinds, the gatherings of generations. 
Here he was accustomed to labor as a sort of Jack of 
all trades, but paid special attention to making hickory 
axe-helves, and could not mention machine-made helves 
without snorting at their worthlessness. 

" My watch business I do at the other end of the 
house," said he, and led the way through several low, 
wainscoted rooms. Finally we came to a door in a 
room corner, and this door was so narrow, a person 
inclined to stoutness would have found it impassable. 
It looked as if it might give access to some secret pas- 
sage, but in reality it opened on a rough little entry 
from which we stepped into the tiniest box of a shop 
imaginable. The apartment was heated by a small 
fireplace, and was furnished with benches and shelves, 
a stool or two, and a miscellany ot delicate tools, 
watches, and pieces of clocks. 

" When I was a young man," confided the old 
watchmaker, " I was offered big wages and a place in a 
large jewellery store ; but I don't want to be tied to any 
one. Here I can work or not as I darn please, and it 
suits me." 

Among other things he showed an oddly decorated 
gold-faced watch which he said had belonged to his 



A Jaunt on Long Island 



159 




An Old-ta.^hionLvi Sitting Rouni 

uncle, the captain of a Sag Harbor whaling vessel. 
His mention of the old port reminded me that it was 
not far distant — only seven miles — and I determined 
to see it. Accordingly, on the following morning, 1 



i6o New England and its Neighbors 

hired a buggy for conveyance and a boy to drive me 
over. The road was the sandiest, ruttiest, and dustiest 
I have ever travelled, and I would have fancied it never 
received any attention, had we not come across an old 
Irishman laboriously digging out turf from the wayside 
and heaving it into the wheel tracks. He adjusted the 
turf as he went along into a hummocky causeway that 
all teams scrupulously avoided. 

Nearly our whole journey was through a desolation 
of burnt woods. The oaks were all stark dead, but 
the pines had withstood the fire better, probably 
because there was less around their bases for the flames 
to Hck up. The fire had occurred the previous year, 
and my driver had gone to it. He never wanted to 
go to another. It used him up. The wind blew and 
the fire leaped the roadways and went as fast as a man 
could run. They had hard work saving the farm-houses 
in and near the woods. 

Some of the districts on the route had such names as 
Hardscrabble and Snooksville and these names seemed 
quite in keeping with the nature of the road. It was a 
main highway, yet it was one of those privately-owned 
mementos of the past — a toll-road, and we had to 
stop at a wayside cabin guarding a gate, and pay 
seven cents for driving over its purgatory. The gate 
was hung on a post opposite the door in the house 
where the toll was collected. I noticed it was open 
when we approached, and that there was no sign 



A Jaunt on Long Island 



i6i 



of closing it after we had driven on. My idea had 
been that toll-gates were ordinarily kept shut, and 
only opened to allow travellers to pass after they had 
paid toll. 

" No," said my driver, " it's open all the time 
except it might be when a tough customer comes 
along that they think Hkely'll kick up a row. It's 
open all night, too, and if the toll-gate people have 
gone to bed you just drive through without paying." 




A Toll-gate on a Seven Cent Road 

Presently we reached Sag Harbor, and my driver 
turned back, while I started out for a ramble about 
the town. The days of the whale fishery were Sag 
Harbor's golden period. Since then it has never 

M 



1 62 New England and its Neighbors 

amounted to much. Still, it appeared to me fairly 
prosperous and its houses comfortable and well kept. 
I only observed one relic of the old days that seemed 
melancholy — a stately mansion heavily shadowed by 
trees. It was of the Greek temple style, with a lofty, 
pillared front ; but its glory had long since departed, 
and it was now dingy and out of repair, and had a 
mildewed, ghostly look as if a blight was on it. 

A short distance beyond, on the same street, a tall, 
bony old man was working at a large buttonball tree 
he had cut down. It had fallen across the highway and 
the top reached the opposite curbing. As the man 
chopped off the branches he trimmed the brush from 
each in turn, and seemed quite oblivious to any need 
of haste in opening the street to traffic. Some teams 
turned around and sought another thoroughfare ; others 
joggled up over the curbing and drove along on the 
sidewalk. After a while a man approached with a load 
of brick. He alighted and came to look at the debris. 
The axeman was pecking away at the brush. 

" See here. Uncle Matthew," said the newcomer, 
"why don't you cut ojff" these top branches so teams 
can go past ? " 

" Wal, I'm agoin' tew." 

" But you no need to trim all the brush first." 

" Naow, look a' here, I'm adewin' of this job, ain't 
I ? If you're in a hurry, drive along on the sidewalk 
same as other folks dew." 



A Jaunt on Long Island 163 

. " But I got a ton and a half o' brick on." 

" That don't make no diPrence," 

" It'd smash my wagon all to flinders. I'll take 
hold here and help, and you can make a road through 
inside o' live minutes." 

The man began to pull some of the small limbs to 
one side. 

" Naow, yew jes' stop that air," exclaimed Uncle 
Matthew. " Yew're mixin' everythin' all up. Yew 
ac' like yew was crazy." 

The two were still disputing when I left, but Uncle 
Matthew was having his way. I went down to the 
harbor. A single long wharf reached out into its 
tranquil waters, and there was no sign of its ever being 
enlivened by much traffic. I wandered along the 
shore with its drift deposits of seaweed and shells. At 
one place two men were overhauling a net with the 
intention of going out to drag it toward evening. At 
another were several children playing in the sand and 
half burying themselves in it. They had been wading 
in the shallows and fishing with tackle improvised from 
willow rods, string, and bent pins. One boy had 
boasted he dared wade out farther than the others, and 
he had tripped and ducked in all over. His jacket 
was spread out to dry on the sand, and he was shiver- 
ing in the wind. 

I had been disappointed in not finding the East- 
hampton windmills at work, and when a Sag Harborite 



164 New England and its Neighbors 

acquaintance informed me that a mill at Bridgehamp- 
ton was usually busy the year round, I departed in 
search of it on the next train. Like most of the old 
shore towns, Bridgehampton is a resort of the city 
summer people to the loss of much of its rural charac- 
ter. However, two white churches of the old regime 
remain, and, on the village borders, are farm-houses 
not yet spoiled by modern quirks in architectural im- 
provement or distortion. Some of these outlying 
houses were in themselves and all their surroundings 
hardly changed from what was usual fifty years ago. 
They have retained the big chimneys, and the small- 
paned windows, the yards are enclosed by lichened 
quarter-board or picket fences, and the hens are always 
lingering close about the house and scratching holes 
under the shrubbery. 

An old dwelling of this sort has a small front yard 
with a path running straight down the middle from the 
front door to the gate, and it has a big side yard with 
a narrow gate for pedestrians that is more or less dis- 
regarded, and a wide gate for wagons. In the workaday 
larger yard is not a little of the paraphernalia of labor 
in the form of machines and vehicles, especially those 
whose best days are past, and there are piles of wood, 
and very likely a few score chestnut fence posts with 
holes cut in them for the insertion of rails. Conven- 
iently near the kitchen door is pretty sure to be a well 
and a pump with a line of trough extending toward 
the barn-yard. 



..: /J'^^ 




\.- .'n 










Making Fence Posts 



A Jaunt on Long Island 165 

The old mill that I had come to seek I presently 
found ; and though the arms were bare and the ma- 
chinery silent, I was encouraged to discover the door 
open. I went in and sat down on some bags. It was 
a dusty, cobwebby structure knitted stoutly together 
with great beams and a multitude of braces and cross- 
pieces. While I was looking about and accustoming 
my eyes to the gloom, a man entered the door. 

"Ah, ha! now I've ketched ye," he said; but his 
tones were not as alarming as his words, and I was 
welcome. 

He was just about to start the mill. The day had 
been too quiet earlier, but the wind was now freshen- 
ing. A wide platform encircled the structure, and, 
standing on that, the miller one by one unfurled the 
canvas sails rolled up on the slatted arms and fastened 
them in position. Then he let the arms free and they 
began to revolve and started the millstones to grinding 
the corn, while he went inside and stood fondling the 
meal in his hand as it came sifting down the spout 
from above. 

The mill had four stories. In the second were the 
hoppers ; the third was for storage, and the topmost, 
a greasy place up in the revolving cap, was nearly 
filled by the big wooden wheels, shafts, and brakes. 
How its upper portions did creak and shake ! I could 
appreciate the necessity for the strong sinews of heavy 
and close-set timbers. Only one of the two pairs of 



i66 



New England and its Neighbors 



millstones was employed to-day, for there was not 
much grist ; but both were busy all through the winter, 




A Windmiller 



and even then they failed to keep up with orders, and 
the miller said he sometimes had three hundred bushels 



A Jaunt on Long Island 



167 



ahead of him. The arms measured sixty-eight feet from 
tip to tip, and were capable of developing energy to 
the amount of forty horse-power. It takes a fair 
breeze to set them in effective motion ; and yet, in a 
gale, they will grind without sails. 

1 loitered for hours in and about the old mill, explor- 
ing the interior and watching from the fields the stately 
revolutions of its white arms ; and I came away satisfied, 
and left Long Island with the feeling that its ancient 
windmills constitute one of the most picturesque 
features in architecture to be found in all America. 




Along Shore at Sag Harbor 



VIII 



LIFE ON A GREEN MOUNTAIN TOP 




Tinkering the Road 



WHATEVER 
road you 
travel in the 
remote New England 
town of Norton you 
are in the woods. Oc- 
casionally you come 
on a little farm in a 
stony clearing, but the 
diminutive fields are 
soon passed and then 
the interminable for- 
est closes in again. A 
narrow-gauge railroad 
touches the eastern 
borders of the town, 
yet it does not affect 
the town life per- 
ceptibly, for it winds 
through a deep valley 



1 68 



Life on a Green Mountain Top 169 

a thousand feet below the level of the scattered homes, 
and the highway that climbs up from the valley is a 
zigzag of the steepest sort which the mountain folk 
themselves avoid when they can. This road gullies 
badly in rains, and now and then portions of the bank 
on one side or the other slide down in the wheel-tracks, 
bringing with them a clump of trees and bushes that 
have to be cut away before the road is passable. 

If you go westerly over the range on whose top lies 
the town, you find another railroad and the large manu- 
facturing village of Milldale, but it is a long distance 
thither, and the descent from the uplands is almost as 
violently steep as that on the east. To the north and 
south the routes are gentler, but these only conduct 
you to other little woodland towns situated, like Norton, 
on the broad mountain summit; and you toil over a 
never-ending upheaval of hills by roads often precipi- 
tous and stony, and interrupted by countless thank- 
you-marms. 

Norton township contains no village. It has not 
even a store. The post-office is in a farm-house, and 
there are three mails a week. The butcher, the baker, 
and the grocer make no rounds and most of the trad- 
ing is done at Milldale ; yet the hard journey to the 
valley is undertaken so seldom that whoever drives 
down is pretty sure to be intrusted with many errands 
by the neighbors. The town hall at Norton is in the 
heart of the woods, hemmed in on every side, and there 



lyo New England and its Neighbors 

is no other building in sight. A mile farther on is the 
church, on the borders of a very considerable open that 
forms the domain of a lone farm-house just over a ridge 
out of sight. 

The town has two widely separated schoolhouses — 
the " White " and the " Holler." The former is on a 
hilltop where four roads meet. For ten or fifteen years 
the building has been painted brown, but previously it 
had always been white, and the name has remained, 
though the color has changed. It is snuggled in the 
edge of a bushy wood, facing some ragged pastures 
and cultivated fields. Close by is a neglected cemetery, 
full of tottering and fallen stones, which nature is fast 
enveloping in weeds and bushes, and down the hill are 
two houses. From the height where the school build- 
ing is perched can be seen several other cleared patches 
amid the forest and a number of homes — " Martin's, 
Jake's, Dan's, Elihu's," etc. The mountain people 
do not use surnames, nor on ordinary occasions do they 
have use for Mr., Mrs., or Miss. When a recent 
teacher from a distance took charge of the " Holler " 
schoolhouse, and, unwitting of the ways of the hill 
folks, addressed certain of the girls who were as large, 
if not as old, as she, with the prefix of Miss, they were 
offended. It seemed to them she was putting on 
airs. 

The Holler schoolhouse is buried much more com- 
pletely in the woods than the White schoolhouse. The 



Life on a Green Mountain Top 



171 



wild berry vines and the bushes have overgrown all the 
space about except a narrow strip in front next the road. 




/\t tlic Sclioulhuusc Duur 



Immediately beyond the highway is a swift, noisy little 
river, and beyond that the forest again. The children 



172 New England and its Neighbors 

are very fond of the stream, and, during the barefoot 
days of warm weather they are always wading and pad- 
dling about in it. The bottom is full of slippery stones, 
and not infrequently a child will souse in all over and 
have to go home to dry off. 

The teacher sweeps out after school, and she comes 
early enough in the morning to start the fire, though 
it has sometimes happened, when she was later than 
usual, that the boys have crawled in through a window 
and started it. The windows are supposed to be fast- 
ened, but as the fastening consists of nails the teacher 
sticks in above the sash, an entrance is easily forced. 
The teacher boards a mile up the river, and the road 
she traverses is for the whole distance through the 
damp, cool woods with the crystal trout stream singing 
along beside it. She has to carry her dinner, as do all 
her scholars, for none of them live near enough to go 
home at noon, 

Norton's wealth, such as it is, depends almost entirely 
on forest craft ; and the chief factor in determining the 
worth of a farm is the character of its woodland. Spruce 
is the most valuable timber, with fir, or " balsam " as 
it is called, pine, and hemlock following after. Beech 
and maple are plenty, but the price hardwood brings 
scarcely repays the expense of getting it out. As for 
cord wood, large towns are too far distant to allow its 
profitable marketing. Of the crops that can be grown, 
potatoes seem best adapted to the mountain soil, but 



Life on a Green Mountain Top 173 

the ground is rough and inclined to bogginess. Worst 
of all, it is full of stones, and though vast quantities are 
carted off and dumped out of the way or made into 
stone walls the plough every year brings up more. 
Where a ledge is encountered, or a boulder too large 
to move, cairns of loose stones are likely to be piled 
around it, and among the debris grow clumps of bushes 
and perhaps a wild apple tree or two. 

Few of the upland inhabitants seemed to be admirers 
of their environment. In the words of one of them, 
who declared he expressed the general opinion, "It's 
a poor place, poor homes, poor everything, and the 
people here now are only waiting for a decent chance to 
sell out and get away." 

But buyers are scarce, and it has to be a farm of 
exceptional merits that will bring more than a thou- 
sand dollars with the house and barn thrown in. One 
of the latest sales was of a place of two hundred and 
fifty acres. Some good woodland was included, but 
the buildings were practically worthless. It was sold 
for taxes, which at the rate of two and one-fourth per 
cent had accumulated until the whole amounted to sixty 
dollars. When these had been deducted from the sum 
realized, and a three hundred dollar mortgage had been 
liquidated, only forty dollars remained. 

In accord with the mountains' most flourishing 
industry, sawmills occur at intervals on every vigor- 
ous stream — weatherworn, unpainted structures with 



174 New England and its Neighbors 




A Trout Stream 

a great penstock bringing water from the dam above, 
and round about them a chaos of logs, piles of boards, 
slabs, sawdust, and rubbish. Sometimes this litter of 
lumber does not keep to the mill site, but is strewn 
along the road for half a mile. 



Life on a Green Mountain Top 175 

While I was in Norton a portable sawmill was set 
up far back from the highway in the woods, and one 
dull morning I paid it a visit. The mist enveloped 
the uplands and made the forest vistas soft and 
mysterious. It was the first of June, and in the wet 
ravine were lady's-slippers coming into bloom, and 
there were enough Jack-in-the-pulpits along the forest 
path I followed to supply all the vernal congregations 
for miles around. Where the woods had been cut off 
were sometimes jungles of high-bush blackberries, or 
thickets of wild cherry snowed over with blossoms ; but 
the ordinary undergrowth was apt to be largely com- 
posed of hobble-bush, whose straggling branches, with 
their tendency to form loops by taking root, give the 
bush its name and make it a great nuisance to the 
lumbermen. It was still full of white flower clusters, 
though these were past their prime. 

In a mountain hollow, which a long-undisturbed 
spruce wood kept in high-columned twilight, I found 
the sawmill. It was a rude framework, with a broad 
roof over the portion that contained the engine. Work 
had just begun, and as yet only a small space right about 
the mill had been cleared, but the whole tract would be 
laid low and sawed during the summer. After the 
lumbermen had finished, the land would be valueless, 
unless some farmer would give a few dollars for it with 
the idea of burning the brush, and converting the de- 
nuded forest into pasturage. With the fine growth of 



176 New England and its Neighbors 

spruce still standing it was worth sixty or seventy dol- 
lars an acre, which was probably as much as any tract 
in town would bring, and certainly exceeded by far the 
worth of any cultivated farm land. 

When I left the sawmill in the woods I took another 
route than that by which I came, and presently walked 
out into a rough pasture. There I met a barefoot little 
girl going homeward, with her hands full of painted 
trillium — " pappooses," she called them. We went 
on together, and after I had to some extent succeeded 
in overcoming her shyness, she told me the names of 
the flowers we saw along the way, among the rest 
"swamp cheese," foam flower, white and blue violets, 
and " shads," more familiar to me as " shad-blows." 
The first of the list was the azalea, as yet only in 
bud. 

I asked the little girl if she liked living in Norton, 
and she replied she did ; but she knew very little about 
other places. Once her father had taken her and her 
brother to the circus in Milldale, and it was plain from 
what she said that both the circus and the town itself had 
seemed quite wonderful. The numerous houses, the 
many streets, and the crowds of peopk, however, were 
bewildering ; and she was glad when they got home 
after a long night drive up the mountain and through 
the dark woods. 

" Would you like a cud of gum ? " inquired the girl 
at length, fumbling in her pocket and producing several 



Life on a Green Mountain Top 177 

brown lumps. "I got it oft a spruce tree near where I 
picked the pappooses." 

" Does every one call the gum they chew a cud ? " I 
questioned. 

" No, some say a chaw, and some say a quid, but the 
children at school mostly says a cud." 

"What is that bird we hear singing now — or whis- 
tling — one low note and several high notes ? " I asked. 

" A fiddler bird, the teacher calls it," was the re- 
ponse. " Teacher says it says, ' Here I come fiddling, 
fiddling' ; and the children at school they say it says, 
' Rejoice and be glad,' and teacher says the robins say, 
' Ephraim Gillet, the sky is skillet, scour it bright, scour 
It clean. 

The fiddler bird, or white-throated sparrow, to which 
we had been listening, visits most parts of New England 
only in its spring and autumn migrations, but it is a 
summer bird in the mountains, and I often heard its 
ringing whistle. Some fancy it cries, " I, I, peabody, 
peabody," whence comes still another of its names — 
peabody bird. None of our songsters has a call more 
powerful and individual. 

My companion informed me she had looked out 
the back door early that morning, and a deer was 
feeding in plain view on the edge of the woods. This 
seemed a very natural incident when I saw the situa- 
tion of the house. It was a little brown dwelling, amid 
some meagre, forest-girded fields, and was out of sight 



lyS New England and its Neighbors 

of all travel, at the end of a grassy byway. The seclu- 
sion was complete. There were only three in the fam- 
ily, and I found the other two members — the father 
and a small boy — loading a wagon with evergreen 
boughs that had been piled about the base of the 
house during the winter to keep out the cold. 

I spoke with them, and after a short chat the man 
suggested we should go indoors. Accordingly we 
adjourned to the kitchen, where he spent an hour 
entertaining me. The room was in much disorder. 
There was litter and grime everywhere, and the 
remains of the breakfast and the unwashed dishes 
were still on the table, although it was nearly noon. 
The ceiling was stained with leakage, and two or three 
great patches of plastering had fallen, while the floor 
was uneven, and so worn that the knots and nails 
stood up in warty eminences all over it. Through an 
open door at the rear of the kitchen I could see out into 
a shed — a gloomy apartment, hung about with gar- 
ments and rags, pieces of harness, tools, and accumu- 
lations of household wreckage. Under foot was a 
scattering of stove wood, mostly tough and knotty 
sticks, that looked as if they had escaped the fire 
because they resisted splitting so strenuously. Horace 
Stogy — that was my host's name — was not a very 
forehanded farmer, and if he had sufficient stove wood 
for immediate needs he took no anxious thought for 
the morrow. 




The Fiddler 



Life on a Green Mountain Top 179 

Mr. Stogy proved to be a musical enthusiast, and 
soon produced a beloved "fiddle" to show me. It 
was a really fine instrument, and he played it with 
delicacy and feeling. He also possessed a piano — 
the only one in town. It stood next the kitchen sink, 
with its legs protected from damage by newspapers 
tied around them. Some of the strings were broken, 
Mr. Stogy said, and he did not use it much anyway. 
His wife, when she was alive, was quite a hand to play 
on it, but he was no pianist himself, and only " played 
chords," an accomplishment which I found was com- 
mon among the mountain folks in such houses as had 
an organ in the sitting room. It consisted in fingering 
a tune by ear and striking keys which were in har- 
mony with the air, though entirely independent of the 
printed notes. 

During the winter Mr. Stogy was in considerable 
demand to furnish music at the dances. For his 
services he received three or four dollars each time. 
The participants in the dances were apt to be of the 
ruder sort, and there was some drinking and roister- 
ing, and the parties did not break up until the gray 
light of morning began to steal across the snowy 
uplands. Serious-minded church members kept aloof 
from this form of merrymaking ; " but I can tell you," 
was one person's comment, " if they was to go they'd 
hurt the dances a good deal more than the dances 
would hurt them." 



i8o New England and its Neighbors 

Nearly all the homes I saw in Norton were in 
many ways akin to Mr. Stogy's. There was very little 
care about appearances. Few of them were painted, 
and dilapidation was not by any means uncharacteristic 
of the majority. The surroundings were unsightly, 
and rubbish gathered where it would. Barns and 
sheds were rarely substantial. Usually they were 
loosely constructed, and had a tendency to totter into 
early ruin. Some of the houses had the stagings on 
the roofs that had been there ever since they were last 
shingled, years before. This looked shiftless, though 
I must confess the stagings might be convenient when 
the time came to shingle again. 

The only new house I observed was one started a 
year or two previously that had come to a stop half 
done ; but whether its owner desisted because he had 
exhausted his energy or his credit, I did not learn. 
The ground around was upheaved just as it had been 
left when the cellar was dug. The roof was on and 
the sheathing, but the building was not clapboarded, 
and no lathing or plastering had been done inside. 
Yet the family had moved in and had taken as a 
boarder the teacher of the "White" schoolhouse that 
is painted brown. A well-worn path led from the 
dwelling down to a stream in the hollow, a few rods 
distant, where there was a dipping-place, and thence 
was brought the household supply of water. At most 
homes spring-water flowed in pipes directly into the 



Life on a Green Mountain Top i8i 





Grandpa gives the Boys some Good Advice 

house, or at least to a tub in the yard, though other in- 
stances were not lacking where families carried the 
water by hand from some natural source, very likely 
quite a walk distant. 

The interior aspect of the Norton houses 1 thought 
better than the exterior, and the sitting room in par- 
ticular usually had touches of attraction and of homely 
comfort. An odd feature of the older houses was a 
cat-hole puncturing the wall low down at one side of 



1 82 New England and its Neighbors 

the kitchen door. A shingle suspended on a single 
nail closed the hole to the weather, and swung back of 
itself into place after a cat had pushed it aside and 
crept through. One house I visited had a second cat- 
hole which gave access to the sitting room from the 
kitchen ; but this was uncommon, and as a rule the cats 
only had free run of the latter apartment. 

Here and there on the Norton hilltops could be 
found grass-grown mounds and excavations, accom- 
panied perhaps by the wreck of an old stone chimney, 
showing where once had been a home ; yet enough 
houses have been built to replace those that have gone. 
The town has not decreased in population, as have 
most rural towns in New England. It was settled late 
— barely a hundred years ago — and it has never 
passed the pioneer stage. It is still a backwoods town, 
and continues, as in the past, largely dependent on its 
forest industries. When the woodlands are exhausted, 
as it seems probable they will be soon, grazing and 
dairying may in some form be found profitable; but it 
is not unlikely that a considerable fraction of the inhab- 
itants will seek some more favored section. In that 
event the forest will take to itself many of the now open 
fields and pastures, effacing, so far as it can, the mem- 
ory of man with his devastating axe, and attempting to 
restore the uplands to their former sylvan solitude. 

Another possibility is that Norton will fare as has 
the mountain town neighboring it to the south, where 



Life on a Green Mountain Top 183 

the old inhabitants have to a great extent sold their 
places to foreigners from Milldale and gone away. 
The " Polacks," Jews, French, " Eyetalians," etc., who 
have moved in, attracted by the fact that they " can 
buy a farm for little or nothing," are not a very desir- 
able class. They " live like pigs," and are often the 
worse for liquor ; but they spend so little for their living 
expenses that they are, comparatively speaking, pros- 
perous. Some of the run-down Yankees who remain 
are more disreputable than the foreigners — drinking, 
swearing, worthless decadents, strangely shiftless and 
irresponsible. I was told of one nondescript family 
of this class that had recently sold a sleigh. Before 
the buyer came for it they had a chance to sell again 
and did so. In each case they got their pay, and when 
man number two discovered the situation, he demanded 
his money within twenty-four hours, or he would have 
them arrested. That night the household packed up 
their goods and wended their way to another state. 

One finds among the mountain dwellers not a few 
peculiar developments of individuality to which the 
seclusion of the thinly settled upland adds its own 
flavor. For instance, there was Dr. Podden. He 
lived in a little house he had built for himself off on a 
rough wood road, and he escaped taxes by refusing to 
pay them unless the town opened up a highway to his 
place. He was a forest hermit of whom the world saw 
little. Gathering gum was his chief employment, but 



184 New England and its Neighbors 

he made some sort of a salve which he sold among the 
neighbors, and this gave him the title of doctor. He 




The Rain-water Barrel 



was tall and dark, with a grizzly beard, and was reputed 
to be " part Injun." 



Life on a Green Mountain Top 185 

Another man out of the common was BHnd Crip- 
ton. He boarded in a family with whom he had been 
for many years, but he was not a dependant and made 
his living by peddling. He could go about the home 
town and several mountain towns adjoining, by him- 
self, and he always knew when he came to a house. 
As he plodded along he tapped the ground before him 
with a long cane, and he had a curious habit of touching 
the knob of the cane to the end of his nose at frequent 
intervals, as if this, in some occult fashion, helped him 
to find his way. His hearing was remarkably acute, 
and it was never safe to whisper in his presence expect- 
ing he would not catch what was said. He could even 
tell to what family a child belonged by the sound of 
its voice. 

His wares were small articles like thread, needles, 
pins, stockings, cough cures, candies, etc. He was a 
man of serious thought and liked to talk about medi- 
cine and history and religion ; but his views on the last 
topic were not very welcome in most homes, for he 
was an aggressive and extreme non-believer. In his 
wanderings Blind Cripton of course lodged and took 
his meals at the farm-houses. He had a keen antipathy 
to pork and would have naught to do with anything 
that contained what he called " squeal-grease," and 
though very partial to dandelion greens, yet if they 
had been cooked with pork he would not partake. In 
fact, he always carried along a supply of crackers in his 



1 86 New England and its Neighbors 

bag, and nibbled those if he was not suited with the 
food at the places where he stopped. 

A more pleasing type than either of these two men 
was Mrs. Flanagan, one of the town's poor. She was 
not wholly dependent and she still lived in her own 
house — a tiny gray dwelling down a steep hill from 
the road, on the far side of a mowing field. As you 
saw it from the highway it seemed lost among the vast 
billowing hills of green forest that rose around. You 
noticed, too, that the little group of buildings looked 
strangely barren — almost as if they were deserted. 
Fifteen years ago Mrs. Flanagan's husband went out 
to an apple tree behind the house and hung himself. 
From that time on she and her daughter Martha car- 
ried on the farm. Then the daughter's health began 
to fail. A cancer was eating her life away, and toward 
the last she became a helpless invalid. Finally she 
died, and the mother struggled on alone, often in dire 
want, until the town officers, realizing that in her feeble 
age she was not fitted to support herself, took her and 
her farm in charge, and drove away her few cows. 
They would have put her in some family to board, 
but to such an arrangement she would not agree ; and 
in a desultory way the officials care for her in the little 
gray house. They furnish her cord-wood and she saws 
it. When the supply fails, as has happened once or 
twice, she goes to the woods and hacks off dead 
branches and drags them home. The selectmen were 



Life on a Green Mountain Top 187 

intending to shingle the dwelling presently, and the 
shingles were ready in the shed. Meanwhile the roof 
leaked badly, and in heavy rains the water came down 
as through a sieve. The lone inmate had even been 
compelled to get up on stormy nights and move her 
bed to escape the dripping from above. 

She was a timid woman, and she suffered a good deal 
from fright during the long nights after Martha died. 
This fear has gradually subsided, but she always locks 
up early and rarely burns a light. Her only constant 
companions now are her three cats, and the favorite of 
these is a yellow cat that she thinks resembles a wood- 
chuck, and so is not a little worried lest some one should 
make a mistake and shoot it. 

The neighbors frequently visit her, for she is a 
gentle old soul and they are fond of her. They bring 
her good things to eat that her own cooking and lean 
larder will not be likely to supply, and they bring her 
flowers. She does not much care for the latter. Her 
mind is of too practical a turn to take much pleasure 
in what is merely pretty and in no way useful. It is a 
far greater satisfaction to get reading matter. She is 
especially interested in the local newspapers, and likes 
to read all there is in them except the murders. 

Before I left Norton, I, too, visited Mrs. Flanagan 
and sat for a half-hour in her tiny kitchen. She apolo- 
gized because it was " so dirty," though in reality it 
was very neat and clean. Yet it was not as it had been 



1 88 New England and its Neighbors 

when Martha was alive. Then they kept everything 
scoured " as white as snow." It was a curious apartment 
— no plastering, no wall-paper, but sides and ceiling all 
roughly sheathed with unpainted smoke-darkened 
boards. There was a small stove, a table, a few chairs, 
and on a shelf a great wooden clock. Mrs. Flanagan 
herself sat in a rocking-chair tucked back in a corner. 
She was frail and white-haired, and wore heavy-bowed, 
old-fashioned spectacles. 

From where she sat the road up the hill was 
in plain sight. She never walked that far, but she 
rarely failed to see every one who passed or who 
turned into the lot on their way to make her a call. 
The approach to the house was very " sideling," and 
such of her visitors as come in a team usually tie the 
horse to the bushes on the borders of the road. She 
lives alone and probably she will die alone, and when 
the neighbors intending to call get within sight of 
the house they always watch to see if the smoke is 
rising from the chimney. Some of them would turn 
back if it were not, fearful that the little gray dwelling 
in the hollow had at last lost its tenant. 

One phase of life on this New England mountain 
top was wholly new to me and unexpected — illicit 
distilling was carried on in Norton. Two or three 
families in different sections of the town were men- 
tioned as engaged in the business, and it was said they 
smuggled off their liquor at night concealed in loads 



Life on a Green Mountain Top 189 

of wood or hay to a town in the lowlands. I asked 
one of the town residents what he knew personally of 
this distilling, and he said : " Well, I've seen little 
streaks of smoke trickling up through the trees from 
Scates's woods, and I've been down through there and 
found coals and ashes and lead pipe. Old man Scates 
nearly died last year from drinking cider brandy he'd 
distilled through lead piping." 

My informant was of the opinion that brandy was to 
some extent illicitly manufactured in all cider regions. 
If the country was not wooded and lonely enough to 
afford good hiding for the plant, the liquor was pro- 
duced in a still set up in the house cellar ; and the dis- 
tillers responded to awkward inquiries by saying that 
they boiled the swill down there. 

I was in Norton over Sunday. It was a doubtful, 
threatening day, a fit successor to a long spell of 
showery, befogged days preceding. Shortly after break- 
fast I heard some one at the kitchen door talking 
with my landlady. The conversation had begun with 
her remarking, " Well, Jim, what's the news this 
morning?" to which he had responded, "Nothing 
much worth lyin' about." 

I looked out the window and saw a lank, long-haired 
youth standing at the threshold. He was evidently 
afflicted with a bad cold and my landlady made 
some sympathetic reference to the fact. " Yes, Mrs. 
Smithers," he said as he blew his nose violently, " and 



190 New England and its Neighbors 

it takes all my time to keep my ventilator open. I 
wish you would pray the Lord for good weather." 

"Hmph!" responded Mrs. Smithers, "this 
weather ain't any o' the Lord's doin's. Fm goin' to 
get a ladder and go up in the sky and whack the 
devil in the head — then we'll have a change, I 
guess." 

" Well, I must be trottin' along," said the man. 
" Most folks lay off on Sunday, but you know Lm 
away from home workin' all the week jus' now, and 
Sunday's the only chance I get to tend to my garden." 

" And do you expect things'll grow that you start 
on Sunday ? " 

" Why, cert ! Don't make no diff'rence about the 
day. You'd ought to see my ineyuns that I planted 
Sunday, two weeks ago — finest-lookin' ineyuns I ever 
set eyes on." 

" But what does your wife say ? " 

" She don't say nothin', 'cause she knows it's neces- 
sary so't she and the children'U have somethin' to live 
on. I tell you gettin' married knocked a lot o' money 
out'n me. Before I was married I didn't have to work 
but half the time, and had money in my pocket, and 
could dress right up to the handle. Now I have to 
work all the time, and can't keep out o' debt — and 
jus' look at my clo'es ! " 

With that he shambled away, blowing his nose as he 
went. 




Taking Care of the Baby 



Life on a Green Mountain Top 191 

Later in the morning the warm sunshine glinted 
through the clouds, and I decided to attend church. 
The way thither was along a shadowed valley road 
delightful with damp, woodsy odors and the mellow 
rustle of a near-by stream hurrying over the stones that 
strewed its channel. I found Deacon Tanner standing 
on the meeting-house steps — a labor-worn, elderly 
man, who greeted me with hearty cordiality. He was 
the chief pillar of the church, and contributed one 
dollar weekly to its support. 

I looked at my watch. Eleven o'clock — just ser- 
vice time. But the Deacon said, " There's no one 
here yet," and we chatted at the door for a half-hour 
before he suggested that we go inside. He told me 
the story of the church. It had been erected largely 
through his efforts. Thirty years ago the town was 
churchless. " I was always a Baptist," he said, " and 
there was one other Baptist family in the town at that 
time, and several Universalists, and, what was worse, a 
number of SpirituaHsts. When we began to think of 
having a church, we held Sabbath services in the town 
hall. That stirred up the Spiritualists, and sometimes 
they'd get into the town hall ahead of us, and they'd 
have a meeting and we wouldn't." 

But it seemed that the Baptists had the most staying 
power, and in the end, with outside assistance, they 
put up a fifteen hundred dollar building, and started 
off with a goodly attendance and a very fair list of 



192 New England and its Neighbors 

members, " I suppose that you would be satisfied 
with just sprinkling," remarked the Deacon in conclu- 
sion, eying me in the hope he was mistaken, " but 
that wouldn't suit me at all." 

The baptisms take place in a pool below a bridge 
a half-mile distant. Whenever any baptizing is to be 
done the banks in the vicinity are lined by a crowd 
largely made up of those outside the fold, to whom 
the ceremony presents a strange and entertaining spec- 
tacle. Some of the ungodly have been known to 
improve the occasion by going up stream and " kick- 
ing up a rile," but there is no serious disturbance. 

The congregation at Norton church on the day I 
attended numbered eleven. We had all walked, and, 
judging from the weedy earth in the line of horse- 
sheds, few ever came in teams. A preacher was lacking. 
The last minister, by holding a service here in the 
morning and at a village three or four miles away in 
the afternoon, had earned seven dollars a week. All 
went well until he became too insistent in his efforts to 
heal the various antipathies that existed ^mong the 
members of his flock. He took sides, and tried to 
bring about harmony by force. He even proclaimed 
that he would expel a certain member from the church 
unless he did as he ought ; and a large congregation 
gathered for several Sundays to witness the threatened 
expulsion. But, instead, the minister left. 

It was customary now for those who came to join in 



Life on a Green Mountain Top 



193 



a Christian Endeavor service and then in a Sunday- 
school. They formed a kind of family party as I saw 
them. There was the Deacon, his wife, a son, two 
daughters, one of them married and accompanied by 







The Lonely Little Church 

her husband and little girl, and a young man and his 
sister, also related to the Deacon, but not so closely as 
the others. The teacher of the " White " school- 
house and I represented the outsiders. 

The church interior was very simple — a low plat- 
form and desk pulpit, a cabinet organ, two rows of 
settees, a big stove, and, on the rear wall, a clock that 
punctuated the quiet with ponderous ticking. One or 
two patches of ceiling had fallen, and the plastering 
was everywhere cracked into an irregular mosaic and 
o 



194 New England and its Neighbors 

looked as if a slight shock would bring it all rattling 
down. The Endeavor meeting was of the usual pattern, 
with singing for its most prominent feature ; but there 
was no lack of remarks, Bible readings, and prayers, and 
every one took a part in these, with the exception of the 
outsiders and the Deacon's little granddaughter. The 
organ was played by the school-teacher, and all sang 
with fervor, though each quite independent of the rest 
as to time and harmony. 

With the beginning of Sunday-school the Deacon 
went to the platform, and put some questions in 
connection with a gaudy-colored picture on a wall roll. 
" What is this, thar ? " he would inquire, and point with 
his eye-glasses, reaching up on tiptoe, for the picture 
hung high. The wall roll illustrated each lesson for 
an interval of three months. They found it helpful, 
and voted to buy another for the next quarter, at an 
expense of seventy-five cents, after being assured by 
the treasurer that while not enough money was then 
in the treasury, there probably would be by the time 
they had to pay for the roll. For detailed con- 
sideration of the day's lesson we divided into two 
classes. The Deacon's son had charge of one, and 
the unmarried daughter of the other. The latter's 
charge consisted of the granddaughter, who preserved 
a discreet silence on most of the questions propounded, 
so that the teacher had to answer them herself. In the 
larger class we went faithfully through the mechanics of 



Life on a Green Mountain Top 



195 



the lesson as printed in the lesson quarterlies, and then, 
duty done, the Sunday-school united in a closing song. 
Now that the religious exercises of the day were 
concluded, the congregation left the meeting-house, 
and loitered homeward, conversing on wholly secular 
subjects, as if the church services had not been. 

I had found it all very interesting, and could not but 
respect those who had built the little church, and were 
keeping it alive. With the Deacon, to be sure, his, 
particular form of religion was his hobby and chief 
pleasure, but at the same time there was something 
fine in his persistent labor and sacrifice for it ; and, 
lacking his support, it seems quite probable that this 
Green Mountain top would again become churchless. 




A Home-made Lumber Wagon 



IX 



DOWN IN MAINE 




I 



HAVE always thought 
that fiction made the 
people of the New 
England country much more 
picturesque and entertaining 
than they really were, for it 
has seemed to me that in 
New England, as elsewhere, 
the commonplace abounded 
and distinct originality only 
cropped out at infrequent in- 
tervals. Since going "down" 
in Maine 1 have revised this 
opinion somewhat, and am 
wiUingto concede more than 
I would have before to our 
dialect writers — at least to 
such as are not carried away 
with a craze for queer types 
and mere grotesqueness. 
The rural population along the Maine coast is com- 
posed almost wholly of Yankees of the purest strain, 

196 



A Mount Desert Well 



Down in Maine 197 

than whom there does not exist a more piquant com- 
bination of shrewdness and originahty, intermixed with 
not a little downright oddity and crankiness. They 
are born jokers, and their conversation is enlivened 
with many curious twists and turns and out-of-the-way 
notions. The talk of the men and boys, it must be 
allowed, is apt to be well seasoned with brimstone, yet 
this insinuates itself in such a gentle, casual way that it 
is robbed of half its significance. On ordinary occasions 
the inclination is to avoid absolute swearing, and make 
the word " darn " in its various conjugations serve to 
give the desired emphasis. " Darn " was one of the 
hardest-worked words I heard, though a close second 
was found in the mention of his Satanic Majesty. 

Another characteristic of the Maine folk was their 
great fondness for whittling. Some of them would 
pare away with their jack-knives at sticks big enough 
for firewood, and at one sitting whittle them all to 
pieces. Yet this jack-knife labor was strangely aimless. 
These down-east Yankees only whittled out their 
thoughts — rarely anything else — not even a tooth- 
pick, though I did see one man, on the porch of a 
store, fashion a prod about a foot long with which he 
proceeded to clean out his ears. 

Still another characteristic of the inhabitants was their 
serene lack of haste. " Forced-to-go never gits far," 
was a sentiment that seemed to have found universal 
acceptance in the rustic fishing village where I sojourned. 



198 New England and its Neighbors 

The people were all loiterers on the slightest excuse. 
You saw them visiting in the fields, thev sat on fences 
together and in the grass bv the roadside, and on the 
counters and among the boxes ot the little stores, and 
on the piazzas in tront ot the taverns and post-offices. 
Teams that met on the road otten drew up to o;ive the 
drivers opportunity to talk, or a man drivinc; would 
meet a man walking, and both would stop, while the 
latter adjusted one foot comfortably on a wheel-hub 
and entered iiito conversation. 

Yet the people were not incompetent or thriftless. 
In their plodding way they nearly all made a decent 
li\int2;, and some accumulated modest wealth. The 
homes were, almost without exception, plain two-storv 
buildings ot wood with clapboarded sides. rhe low, 
old-fashioned, weatherworn houses, shingled all over, 
walls as well as roots, were getting rare. Barns were 
small, tor it is not a good tarming region, and the 
houses presented a somewhat torlorn anci barren aspect 
trom lack ot the great elms, maples, and spreading 
apple trees which in other parts of New England are 
an almost certain accompaniment of countrv homes. 
1 hese trees do not flourish in northeastern Maine. 
Instead, spruce and fir are the typical trees ot the 
landscape. Their dark torests overspread a very 
larcre part of the countrv and give to it a look of rude 
northern sterility, bespeaking short summers and long, 
cold winters. 



Down in Maine 



99 




A Lobster-pot 

To me the region was most attractive close along the 
shore. I liked to linger on the odorous wharves, with 
their barnacled piles and their litter of boards and barrels, 
ropes and lobster-pots. I liked still better to follow 
the water-line out to the points where were seaward- 
juttmg ledges against which the waves were ceaselessly 
crashing and foaming. Behind the points the sea 
reached inland in many a broad bay and quiet cove, 
and with every receding tide these invading waters 
shrunk and left exposed wide acres of mud-flats where 
barefoot boys grubbed with short-handled forks for 
clams. Then there were the frequent ruins of old 
vessels, some of them with hulls nearly complete, but 
dismantled of everything that could be ripped off and 



200 New England and its Neighbors 

taken away ; others with little left save their gaunt, 
black ribs sticking up out of the sand like the bones of 
ancient leviathans of the deep. 

" 'Twa'n't storms that spiled 'em — leastways that 
wa'n't the trouble with most on 'em," explained a man 
I had questioned about them. " They just wa'n't sea- 
worthy no longer, you know." 

The man was fastening a new sail to the bowsprit of 
his clumsy fishing sloop that lay on its side on the 
beach. " But you see that vessel, right over thar in 
the middle o' the cove — that's a wrack. It drove in 
here in a storm with nobody on board. That was a 
East Injiaman wunst. There ain't many vessels of 
any size owned along the coast here now. This boat's 
the sort we have mostly hereabouts these days. I go 
lobsterin' in it. I got one hundred and twenty pots 
out, and I'll be startin' to visit 'em about three, o'clock 
to-morrer mornin'. It'll be noon by the time I c'n 
make the rounds and git back." 

I left the man tinkering his boat and went up from 
the shore into a pasture field. There I found two chil- 
dren, a boy and a girl, picking wild strawberries. The 
berries were small, but they were sweet and had a deli- 
cate herby flavor never attained by cultivated varieties. 
The boy said they intended to sell what they picked 
to the hotels. The hotels were good customers all 
through the season, and the children tramped over 
many miles of field and swamp and woods in a search 



Down in Maine 



20I 



for the succession of berries — from the strawberries, 
which ripened in June, and the raspberries, blackberries, 
and blueberries and huckleberries which followed later, 
to cranberries in the early autumn. 

Now a man called to the little girl from a neighboring 
patch of cultivated land where he was hoeing. " Susy," 




A Home on the Shore 



he said, " I want you to go home 'n' get my terbacker. 
It's right in my other pants't I hung up by the suller 
door." 

" Do you want your knife, too ? " the girl called 
back. 

" No, jest the terbacker. I can't work good 'ithout 
it." 

"Your beans are looking well," said I, from over 
the fence. 



202 New England and its Neighbors 

" Yes ; but the darned weeds grow so I have to hoe 
*em," he complained, with the air of thinking the 
weeds increased in number and size out of pure con- 
trariness. 

" You're a stranger round here, ain't ye ? " he con- 
tinued, inquiringly. 

I acknowledged that I was. 

" Well, d'ye ever see that stun over't Green 
Harbor ? " 

No ; I had not. 

" Well, ye ought to. It's a grave-stun — marble 
— 'n' 't was jes' like any other stun when 'twas 
planted. Man named Ruckle is buried thar. I c'n 
remember him when I was a boy. He was a great 
hand for religion — use to be alus tellin' how now 
he bore the cross, but sometime he'd wear the 
crown. 

" An' people use to say to him he mustn't be too 
sure. Might be he'd go to hell after all. But, no, he 
knowed he was goin' to heaven, 'n' if there was any 
way o' informin' his friends he was wearin' the crown 
after he died he'd let 'em know. Well, he died 'n' 
they buried him 'n' put up the stun, 'n' 'bout three 
months after'ards people begun to notice there was 
somethin' comin' out on't. It was special plain after 
rains, 'n' then they made out 'twas a figger of a man 
with his hands folded, prayin' ; and there was a crown 
on his head. It'd pay you to go over thar 'n' see that 




SuiMMER Calm 



Down in Maine 203 

thar stun. You arsk for Job Ruckle. He's a relative 
'n' he'll tell you all about it." 

My curiosity was aroused, and a few days later I 
went over to Green Harbor and looked up Mr. Job 
Ruckle. He was standing in his kitchen doorway. 

" It isn't going to storm, is it ? " I remarked. 

Mr. Ruckle cast his eyes skyward. "Well, I do' 
know," was his response, "we been havin' awful funny 
weather here lately. Now to-day you can't tell what 
it's goin' to do. There's spells when the sun almost 
shines, and then it comes on dark and foggy 'n' you 
hear the big bell dingin' down at the lighthouse." 

His friendly communicativeness, like that of most 
of the natives, was delightful. I mentioned the mysti- 
cal gravestone and he said : " I'll take ye right to the 
buryin'-groun' 'n' show it to ye. But I got to draw 
a bucket o' water fust. My woman'd give me Hail 
Columby if I didn't." 

He picked up a heavy wooden pail, and I followed 
him across the yard to an antiquated well-sweep. He 
lowered and filled the pail. 

" The well ain't so very deep, but you won't find no 
better water nowhar," he declared. 

I begged to try it and commended its sweetness and 
coolness. 

" Yes, the rusticators all take to that water," was his 
pleased comment. 

By rusticators he meant the summer boarders of the 



204 New England and its Neighbors 

region. That was the common term for them on the 
Maine coast. At first my unfamihar ears failed to 
catch the signification of the word, and I had the fancy 
that a rusticator was some curious sea creature akin to 
an alligator. 

" These 'ere rusticators," the man went on, " stop 
here time 'n' agin to git a drink from my well. 
That's ginoowine water, that is ! " 

Presently he was leading the way down one of the 
narrow, woodsy lanes that abound in the district to 
the rustic burial-place of the community. 

" Thar's the stun," said Mr. Ruckle, "'n' thar's 
the figger coverin' the hull back on't. Here's the 
head 'n' the two eyes, 'n' out this side is the hands 
clasped, 'n' thar's the crown. Looks like an old 
Injun, I tell 'em. There's lots o' people come here 
to see it — some on 'em way from Philadelphia, 'n' 
I've seen this lane all full o' rusticators' buckboards. 
Some think the figger's a rael sign from heaven ; but 
my idee is that the marble's poor, or thar wouldn't 
no stain a come out that way. I tell the relations 't 
I'd take the stun down 'n' put up a good one, but 
the rest on 'em won't have it teched." 

The story of the stone was interesting and the 
cloudy markings on its back curious, and I could 
make out the vague figure crowned and prayerful, 
yet it certainly was too grewsomely like an " old 
Injun " to be suggestive of a heavenly origin. 



Down in Maine 



205 



One thing that impressed me during my stay in 
Maine was the astonishing number of httle churches 
among the scattered homes. I could not see the need 
for half of them. The only excuse offered for their 
superabundance was the uncompromising denomina- 
tionalism of the inhabitants. One man told me of 
a little hamlet where two churches had recently been 
begun — a Methodist and a Baptist. 

" They're at Clamville, way up 't the end o' Hog 
Bay," he explained, with the customary attention to 
details. " 'Tain't nothin' of a place — only 'bout 
six houses there and the people are poorer'n Job's 
turkey ; but somethin' stirred 'em up lately, and 
they set to work to put up them two churches. 
Well, their money's given out now, and they've 
stopped on both of 'em. I wouldn't wonder a mite 
if they stood there jes's they air, half finished, till 
they rotted and tumbled to pieces." 

It was a man named Smith who related this. He 
was driving and had overtaken me walking on the 
road, and as he was alone he had offered me the 
vacant seat in his buggy. That is a way the Maine 
folks have, for a team not already filled never passes 
a pedestrian, whether acquaintance or stranger, without 
this friendly tender of assistance. 

" You look like a feller I knew once that was to 
our Smith reunion, over in Washington County a few 
years ago," the man confided. " But he was rather 



2o6 New England and its Neighbors 

taller'n you, come to think. I was Hvin' over there 
then and I got up the reunion myself. We had a 
great time. There was Smiths from all around — 
Massachusetts and everywhere — forty or fifty of 
'em ; and there was a friend of mine there, an artist 
from Aroostook County with his camera. He took 
two pictures of the crowd, and he had bad luck with 
both of 'em. I looked through his machine and it 
was the prettiest sight ever I see — all of us settin' 
there on the grass with the woods behind. By 
George, I wouldn't 'a' had them pictures fail for 
twenty-five dollars ! 

" You're stoppin' over here at Sou' East Cove, I 
s'pose.. You at one o' the hotels?" 

"Yes, at Bundy's." 

" Well, that's a good place — best there is there. 
I'll set you right down at the door. Bundy's wife's 
a good cook, and they ain't too highfalutin on prices. 
Only trouble is Bundy gets full." 

" What, in Maine ? " 

" Oh, yes, no trouble about that. You c'n always 
get your liquor in packages from the cities, and there's 
always drinkin' resorts in every town that has drinkers 
enough to support 'em. In Bar Harbor and such 
places they run the saloons perfectly open, but mostly 
they are a little private about 'em. You have to go 
downstairs and along a passage or something of that 
sort. It's understood that about once a year the 



Down in Maine 207 

drinkin' places'Il be raided, and every rumseller pays 
a fine of one hundred and fifty dollars. System 
amounts to low license to my thinkin', and I don't 
see but there's full as many drunkards in Maine as 
you'll find anywhere else among the same sort of 
people. 

" I'll tell you of a case. I live back here a mile 
or so beyond where I picked you up, and down a 
side road near the shore there's a man and wife lives, 
and the man gets tight about once in so often. He's 
uglier'n sin when he's spreein' — beats his wife 'n' all 
that sort o' thing. Well, up she come the other 
night through the woods carryin' a little hairy dog 
in her arms. Her man had been and got crazy 
drunk and took to throwin' things at her, and her 
face was cut and bleeding. She was highstericky 
bad, and talkin' wild like, and huggin' that little dog 
o' hern and tellin' it to kiss her — only comfort she 
had in the world, she said. I was for gettin' the 
man arrested, but she wouldn't hear of it. 

" Hohum, wal, wal, it ain't easy to know what to 
do about this drinkin' business, and our Maine system 
don't work to perfection no more'n any other. Guess 
it's goin' to rain." 

It did rain that evening — came down in floods 
with an accompaniment of lightning and thunder. 
After supper I sat on the piazza with the rest of the 
hotel family. Among the others gathered there was 



2o8 New England and its Neighbors 

a young woman from one of the neighbor's, and a travel- 
ling agent who said he had made fifteen hundred dol- 
lars in nine weeks, and a piano-tuner from a seaport 
a score of miles distant, who said he had made thirty- 
four dollars in the last three days. " But I ain't col- 
lected a red cent of it," he added, " and how in the 
old Harry 'm I goin' to pay my hotel bill with things 
goin' on that way I'd like to know ! " 

Slap ! The piano-tuner despatched a mosquito. 

" Dick," said he, addressing the landlord, " where'd 
all these mosquitoes come from down around here?" 

" Well," responded the landlord, soberly, " we 
bought quite a few last year. Had 'em barrelled up 
and sent on from Boston." 

" Dick, d' you know," said the travelling agent, " I 
like to 'a' got killed when I come off the steamer 
on to your wharf this trip ? " 

" No ; how's that ? " 

" My gosh, I had the greatest highst 't I ever had 
in my life ! Stepped on a banana peel or some- 
thing, and my feet went out on the horizontal so 
almighty quick I forgot to flop. I couldn't 'a' sat 
down any harder if I'd 'a' weighed five ton ! " 

Then the others related various " highsts " they 
had experienced, after which the piano-tuner changed 
the subject by remarking : " Too bad you didn't git 
your hay in, Dick. I'd 'a' helped you if you'd spoken 
to me about it." 



Down in Maine oqq 

The hay alluded to was a bedraggled little heap in 
front of the hotel steps that had been mowed off a 
a patch about two yards square. 

" Yes, that grass is wetter'n blazes, now. I cut it 
with my scythe this mornin', and I been calculatin' 
to put it on my wheelbarrer 'n' run it into the barn, 
but I didn't git round to it. This's quite a shower 
and it's rainin' hot water — that's what it's doin' ! 
But it'll be all right to-morrer. These evenin' 
thunder-storms never last overnight. You take it 
when they come in the mornin', though, and you'll 
have it kind o' drizzly all day." 

"Dick," said the tuner, "what's the matter you 
don't git the rusticators here the way they do at Cod- 
port .? This is a prettier place twice over." 

"The trouble," replied Dick, "is with the Green 
Harbor end o' the town. We got all the natural attrac- 
tions this end, and there ain't no chance o' the rustica- 
tors quarterin' over there't Green Harbor, and the Green 
Harborers know it. So the whole caboodle of 'em 
turns out town meetin' days and votes down every 
blame projec' we git up for improvin' o' the place. 
Only thing we ever got through was these 'ere slatted- 
board walks laid along the sides o' the roads, but 
they're gittin' rotted out in a good many spots now. 
What we want is asphalt." 

" But the rusticators like scenery," commented the 
piano-tuner. " Perhaps your scenery'd draw 'em if 



2IO New England and its Neighbors 

you only fixed it up a little. I've heard tell that they 
whitewash their mountains in some places so 't they 
look snow-capped. Why don't you whitewash your 
mountains up back here ? You'd have all the people 
in Boston comin' up to look at 'em." 




An Old Schoolroom 

Mr. Bundy ignored the suggestion of whitewash. 
His mind still dwelt on the wrongs of his end of the 
town. " We can't even git a new schoolhouse," he 
declared. " Same old shebang here we had when I 
was a boy, and same old box desks. They're most 
whittled to pieces now, and the roof leaks like furia- 
tion. You'd find the floor all in a sozzle if you was 
to go in there to-night." 



Down in Maine 2ii 

"That's your district school, ain't it?" questioned 
the travelHng agent. " But you got a good high 
school ? " 

"Yes, the buildin"s good enough, but the school 
only keeps here one term. Then it goes down t' the 
Point a term and then over t' Green Harbor a term." 

" What do the children do ; foller it around ? " 

" No ; it's four miles between places, and that's too 
fur." 

" Nearly all the boys in town seem to have bicycles," 
I said. " I should think they might go on those." 

" That's so, there is a considerable number of 
bicycles owned round here," acknowledged Mr. 
Bundy. " D' you ever notice though, 't a boy c'n 
go almost any distance on his bicycle for pleasure, but 
as f'r usin' it f'r accomplishin' anythin', he might's 
well not have any ? " 

"Well, I've got to go home," interrupted the 
young woman from the neighbor's. 

" What's your rush .? " a young fellow sitting next 
her inquired. " Thought I was keepin' company with 
you. We no need to be stirrin' before midnight — 
'tain't perlite." 

"Midnight! what you talkin' about?" scoffed the 
landlord. " When I used to go to see my girl we set 
up till half-past six in the mornin' — set up till break- 
fast was ready." 

" Well, I can't wait no longer," reiterated the girl. 



212 New England and its Neighbors 

" Hold on," said the young fellow. " I'll borry a 
lantern and go along with you." 

" 'Tain't far, I don't want ye to," was the response, 

" You git over across the street there alone and the 
thunder'll strike you ! " the piano-tuner remarked. 

But she had gone, and he turned to the young fel- 
low : " Well, I'm blessed if you didn't make a muddle 
of it. Course she wouldn't go home with you. Who'd 
go home with a lantern ! " 

For a time the company lapsed into silence and 
meditated. Then some one spoke of a schooner which 
had come into the bay and anchored the day before, 
and went on to say that it had eight or ten young fel- 
lows on board from New York. " They're sailin' the 
boat themselves except for a cap'n and a darky cook, 
and they're givin' shows along the coast. They give 
one over t' the Point last night." 

" What was it like? " inquired Mr. Bundy. 

" Well, 'twas kind of a mixture, but minstrels much 
as anything." 

" There's a good deal goin' on around here just 
now," commented the landlord. " To-morrer night 
there's a dance over 't Green Harbor, and night after 
that there's a dance here." 

" Isn't it pretty hot weather for dancing? " I asked. 

" Yes, I'll warrant there'll be some sweatin' ; but we 
don't mind that. W& dance in spells all the year, 
though we ain't had any dances lately, since winter." 



Down in Maine 213 

" How much is the admission ? " 

" Ladies are free. The men pays fifty cents each, 
or fifteen cents it they come in to look on and not to 
dance. But you wait till next week. We're goin' to 
have a regular town show then. You've seen the 
posters, I s'pose. There's one in the office, and 
they're all around the town — on fences and trees and 
barn doors, and I do' know what not. The fellers 't 
put 'em up said they plastered one on to the back of 
every girl they met. Course that's talk, but 1 know 
they pasted some on to Bill Esty's meat cart." 

" Yes," said the piano-tuner, " and they got one 
on to Cap'n Totwick's private kerridge, too." 

"Private darnation ! " responded Mr. Bundy. "The 
only private kerridge Cap'n Totwick's got 's that ram- 
shackle old wagon he peddles fish in." 

" I met the cap'n when I come Monday," the piano- 
tuner went on. " I was standin' out in front o' the 
post-office readin' a letter when he drove up from his 
house just startin' out on a trip, and he stopped and 
told me he'd forgot to take his horse's tail out o' the 
britchin' when he was harnessin', and if I'd switch it 
out for him 't would save him gittin' out. I see the 
bill pasted on his wagon then, and to pay for my horse- 
tail job I made him wait while I read it through." 

" Say, you wouldn't think it to look at him," said 
the landlord, " but Cap'n Totwick's got a good lot 
o' money salted down." 



214 New England and its Neighbors 

" He dresses like an old scarecrow," responded the 
piano-tuner, " and five doUars'd be a big price for that 
hoss he drives." 

" Well," said Mr. Bundy, " I was at the post-office 
one day and the cap'n come in just as I was sayin' 
I wanted to git a sixty dollar check cashed, and he 
reached down into his old overhalls for his pocket-book, 
and cashed the check — yes, sir!" 

Thus the talk rambled on from one topic to another 
through the long evening. I can only suggest in what 
I have related its racy interest and the graphic glimpses 
it afforded of the life and thought of the region ; and 
when I think it over I am glad I avoided the famous 
resorts and big hotels in my trip and took up lodgings 
in that humble hostelry at Sou' East Cove. 




A Moonlit Evening 



X 



ALONG THE JUNIATA 



Fl FTY years ago 
that idyllic lit- 
tle song, " The 
Blue Juniata," was 
known by every one. 
It is very simple, and 
yet the sentiment of 
the words and the 
gay, easily caught har- 
mony of the music 
pleased the public 
fancy, and it was not 
only universally sung, 
but parents named 
their children after 
the heroine, and boat- 
owners adopted the 
name for their boats. 
The song is not now as widely and ardently beloved 
as formerly, though it still charms, and it is to be 

215 




The H..mc l'..Rh 



2i6 New England and its Neighbors 

found in the popular collections. The first verse 
is — 

" Wild roved an Indian girl. 
Bright Alfarata, 
Where sweep the waters 

Of the blue Juniata. 
Swift as an antelope 

Thro' the forest going. 
Loose were her jetty locks 
In wavy tresses flowing." 

What always impressed me most in this and the 
other three verses of the song was the river. Its 
beauty, I thought, must be superlative — the blue 
Juniata and the sweep of the waters — how delightful ! 
The rhythm of the river's name, too, made a strong 
appeal to my imagination, and it was these things more 
than anything else that impelled me to visit the stream 
toward the close of a recent summer. I did not get 
acquainted with its upper course, but kept to the hilly 
country through which it flows for many miles before 
it empties into the Susquehanna. On either sicie are 
frequent wooded ridges extending away at right angles, 
with pleasant farming vales between. Numerous little 
towns are scattered along the banks, each with a cov- 
ered wooden bridge reaching across the stream. The 
river is too small and shallow to be used for traffic, 
and it is never enlivened by anything larger than row- 
boats. It has hardly the rollicking character suggested 



Along the Juniata 217 

by the song which has made it famous, and yet its only 
serious fault, as I saw it, was its color. 

" No, it ain't blue just now," said a farmer, on whose 
piazza I had taken refuge to escape a shower, " but 
it is usually. This year, though, we've been having 
rains constant, and the river's been muddy all summer. 
There ain't been a single time when we could go 

gigging." 

" Gigging ! What is that ? " I asked. 

" Ain't you ever gigged ? " 

I confessed that I had not. 

" Well, gigging is going out in a boat at night with 
a lantern and a spear after fish. Sometimes we get fish 
that long" — placing his hands about two feet apart — 
" carp, you know." 

From where we were sitting we looked across a 
grassy yard enclosed by a picket fence. The fence 
was designed primarily to keep out the hens and 
other farm animals, but it came very handy as a 
hanging-place for pails and crocks and various house- 
hold odds and ends. The crocks were especially 
conspicuous. Indeed they were to be found on 
nearly all the farmyard fences throughout the region ; 
for the people were accustomed to put their milk in 
crocks instead of in pans. On this particular fence 
there was quite a line of these crocks — squat, heavy 
earthen jars that would each hold about four quarts. 
In color they were light brown, excepting one of a 



2l8 



New England and its Neighbors 



deep brick tint, which the man said had been his 
grandmother's, and was, he supposed, more than a 
hundred years old. 

" This house is old, too," he added — " anyways the 
end toward the road is. It is an old Indian house. 




The Dooryard Fence 

and that end is built of logs. There used to be loop- 
holes in it to shoot from, but the logs and everything 
has been boarded over and hid from sight this long 
time, inside and out. It seems as if Indians must have 
been plenty here once. We're always ploughing up 
their arrow-tips and tomahawks." 

The shower was nearly past, and the man stepped 
out into the yard and picked several clusters of grapes 
from a vine that trailed up a tall pear tree. " These're 



Along the Juniata 219 

right nice, now," he remarked, as he handed me 
some, 

" Which do you get most of — pears or grapes — 
from that tree ? " I inquired. 

" Well, since the vine's growed over the whole tree 
we often won't get more'n half a bushel o' the pears, 
but you c'n see we'll get a good lot o' grapes this 
year." 

When the last lingering drops of the rain had fallen 
I returned to the muddy road. A mile's tramping 
along its sticky trail brought me to a railway station, 
and I sat down to rest on a platform truck. Every 
few minutes a freight train would go thundering past. 
The valley is a great railroad thoroughfare ; for the 
stream has graded a pathway through the hills directly 
toward the coal and iron regions of the western part of 
the state. The trains were very long, and often con- 
tained from sixty to eighty cars. How the engines did 
pant and sway from side to side as they shouldered 
along, dragging their mighty burdens ! 

" I suppose the weight of that there train is almost 
beyond computation," said a sunburned, middle-aged 
man, who had sat down on the truck near me just as a 
train of monstrous coal cars, all loaded to the brim, 
clattered past. 

This remark led to a conversation, and the man told 
me he had a farm a few miles back from the river. It 
was a little farm — only fifteen acres — and I judged 



220 New England and its Neighbors 

he did not depend entirely on it for a living. At any 
rate he mentioned that the previous spring when the 
floods had washed away nearly all the bridges in his 
town he had taken the time to help for several weeks 
rebuilding them. But his farm had suffered as a conse- 
quence. " I bought a sprayer for my trees," he said, 
" and I only got a chance to use it on one side of one 
apple tree, and that tree is just loaded on the side I 
sprayed and you kin hardly find another apple on the 
place." 

Speaking of the farms in the district as a whole, he 
said that while some ran up to two and three hundred 
acres or even larger, a hundred acres was considered a 
fair-sized farm and there were more under that figure 
than over. The tendency is for the farms to divide 
into smaller ones. The majority of them are mort- 
gaged, and the farmers are just about able to meet their 
interest charges and other expenses and hold their own. 
" Yes, it takes some scratching to pay a mortgage," 
my companion declared. " You wunst get one and 
it hangs on and hangs on and you're likely to be left 
in the brush in the end." 

It was his opinion that the local farmers had not 
shared the prosperity of the country in recent years ; 
and yet some of their troubles were of their own mak- 
ing. There was the way they went into life insurance, 
for instance. I did not clearly understand the relation 
of cause and effect in parts of what he had to say on 




After the Day's Wori. 



Along the Juniata 221 

this subject. Life insurance was evidently a great bug- 
bear to him. He looked on it as the wildest kind of 
speculation and may have got something of a different 
nature mixed with his narrative. 

" We have had people that was well fixed, and life 
insurance has made 'em poor," he affirmed. " There 
was one man I know that went into it right strong, and 
he kep' makin' until he had twenty- five thousand 
dollars, and he was tellin' a neighbor man about it ; and 
this neighbor, he was a good old Christian man, and he 
said, ' Now stop, you've got a good house and buildings 
and a good farm and you've got all that money. 
You're the richest man in these parts. Now stop 
where you are.' 

" But the man said he was goin' to go in again and 
double his twenty-five thousand and then he'd stop. 
So he insured some more and lost all he had, and last 
week his farm was sold at auction for thirty-seven 
hundred dollars. 

" The insurance agents are always goin' about among 
us tryin' to get us to insure, and I'll tell you jus' how 
mean and low and devilish they are; and I'm a man 
of truth, mister, and you can depen' on what I say. 
They try to make you insure your relatives that are 
gettin' old. Now, I call that devilish. I intend to 
live right, I'm a member of the church and of the 
Sunday-school, and I'm a delegate to-day on my way 
to a church meetin'. Well, they been after me 



222 New England and its Neighbors 

to insure my parents ; but I don't want to harbor the 
thought that I could make money by their dying. 
There was one feller bothered me special. My father 
was gettin' feeble and he was a consumptive man, and 
this agent was forever urgin' me to insure my old 
father for ten thousand dollars. 

" I didn't like to be dragged into a thing I knew 
the devil was in, but he kep' at me, till one day he 
come when I had the toothache and neuralgia. 1 
thought my eyes was goin' to bust out of my head ; 
and I said, ' I don't want to see you no more. If you 
come here again — unless you've got the law to pro- 
tect you in your business — I'll kill you or cripple 
you for life. I'd do it now, but you've jus' hit me on 
the wrong day. I got the toothache and the neuralgia 
so I ain't fit to do nothing.' 

" That's what I tol' him, and he never dared show 
himself there again. 

" Some folks gets their insurance money by fraud. 
I know a man that made out a certificate declarin' a 
certain person had died that hadn't. He is a man that 
pretends he is a minister and signs ' Rev.' to his name, 
but he is so ignorant he don't know enough hardly to 
direct his poor little children aright. 

" The Good Book says, ' What a man sows that 
he'll reap,' and it's true. Most of 'em that insure has 
a pretty hard -time. The payments have to be made 
and that takes all that them who are insured kin earn. 



Along the Juniata 223 

and a good many times it eats up all their property. 
Men that was well-to-do have got shaky and are about 
halfway on each side o' the fence. You can't tell when 
they'll have to drop everythin'. 

" There's a case like that right next to me. My 
neighbor, he got his mother-in-law insured. He was 
a poor man, but he didn't think she'd live long, and 
he paid on and paid on until he about broke his neck. 
I was talkin' with him only lately, and he was askin' 
me what he better do. 

" I tol' him, ' Unless you stick to it you'll lose all 
you've put in.' 

" That didn't make him feel any better, and he 
swore and called his mother-in-law a bad name, and 
said every one died but the right one. Now, ain't 
that devilish ? " 

I had to acknowledge that the spectacle of this man 
anxiously awaiting the demise of his mother-in-law was 
not at all admirable, even supposing her character fur- 
nished mitigating circumstances. What further in- 
formation I might have gathered on the subject of 
insurance I do not know, for my friend's train came 
in just then and we parted company. 

During my wanderings along the Juniata I went up 
several of the side valleys, and found them uniformly 
fertile and attractive. I wondered if my acquaintance 
at the railroad station was not mistaken about the 
prevalence of mortgages, but I was assured by others 



224 New England and its Neighbors 

that he was not. Certainly the broad, smooth fields, 
and the numerous herds grazing on the aftermath in 
the home lots, and the substantial houses and great 
barns were suggestive of comfort and plenty. The 
dwellings were in most cases wooden ; but brick and 
stone were not infrequent. The home vicinity had 
always a pastoral, domestic air. You were sure to see 
cats aplenty, and a loitering dog or two ; hens and 
chickens were everywhere, and it was not unlikely the 
farm poultry would include ducks and turkeys; 




Typical Outbuildings 

pigeons fluttered about the roofs of the whitewashed 
outbuildings, a bevy of calves would be feeding in 
a near field, and you could hear the pigs grunting in 
the hog-sheds. 

Wheat was the leading crop of the region, and most 
barnyards at that season contained a towering stack of 



Along the Juniata 



225 



straw, somewhat undermined by the gnawings of the 
cattle. Indian corn was another heavy crop. The 
grain raised was nearly all ground locally, and every 
town had its grist-mill, usually a big stone structure in 
a vernal hollow, with a placid mill-pond just above. 



fe^ Jm^ 


-^ ^pSH^ j^^fe 


. 


.^•^"'^:*":../:^ 


^c....' ^^ 


^KMS" ' "" 


Igllig 



A Grist-mill 

These mills were delightfully rustic, and they had a 
pleasing air of age and repose. I liked, too, their 
floury odor. There was something very sweet and 
primal about it, as of a genuine fruit of the earth — 
not simply a tickler of the palate, but an essential sus- 
tainer of human life. I approached one of the mills 
and asked a young fellow who was smoking his pipe 
in the doorway if they allowed visitors. 

" Depen's on what sort o' 'umor the captain's in," 
said he, and turned and spoke to some one in the mill. 

Q 



226 New England and its Neighbors 

The " 'umor of the captain," or proprietor, proved 
to be agreeable, and I spent half an hour looking 
about the dusty, cobwebby old building, with its big 
wheels and hoppers, and heaps of grain, and bags of 
flour and meal. 

I returned to the road presently and resumed my 
walk, and a quarter of a mile farther on came to a 
cider-mill that had just begun its autumn work. It 
was a shaky little skeleton of a structure on the banks 
of the creek, with a blacksmith's shanty adjoining ; 
and the mill and shop together drew a crowd. A 
bellows wheezed and a hammer clanked from the 
dusky recesses of the shop ; a horse was being shod, 
and its mate, still hitched to the heavy farm-wagon, 
stood half asleep outside. A small engine puffed and 
rattled within the mill, and a farmer at one side was 
shovelling a load of apples into the hopper. Other 
loads were waiting their turn, each with an empty 
barrel or two on top. A group of children lingered 
about looking on and eating apples which they selected 
from the wagons, and a number of men were sitting or 
standing here and there, visiting and chaffing and oc- 
casionally stepping up into the mill to take a drink 
of cider from a tin cup that hung handy. 

Most of the cider the farmers were then making was 
to be boiled down for use in preparing a winter's 
supply of cider apple-sauce, or apple-butter, as it was 
called. Apparently no family could do without this 



Along the Juniata 



227 



culinary luxury, and I saw the process of manufacture 
going on in many a back yard. It was important that 
the cider should be boiled while it was perfectly sweet ; 
and as soon as possible after it had been brought home, 
a great copper kettle was set up in some convenient 
spot, filled with cider, and a fire built underneath. The 




Making Apple-butter 

rule was to boil the cider three-fourths away ; and if the 
boiling was started early in the morning, it would be 
completed by noon. The scene presented was quite 
gypsylike, with the crackling flames, and the splutter- 
ing, bubbling pot, and the smoke and vapors, and the 
sunbonneted women hovering about. 



22 8 New England and its Neighbors 

When the cider had been properly reduced, the 
pared and sliced apples were added, and flavored — 
perhaps with cinnamon, or perhaps with allspice and 
cloves. The boiling of the apple-sauce would very 
probably continue into the evening. All through the 
afternoon the women took turns in keeping the con- 
tents of the pot stirring, for which purpose they used 
a wooden paddle with a very long handle inserted at a 
right angle. It was a relief to every one concerned, 
when the apple-butter had thickened and was pro- 
nounced done. Now it only needed to be taken up 
with a dipper and put into casks or earthen crocks and 
it was ready to be set away. Some households were 
content with fifteen or twenty gallons, but others 
thought they could not get along with less than a 
"bar'l" full. 

Skirting the north bank of the Juniata was the 
ditch of an old canal. In the bottom was more or 
less stagnant water, but for the most part the hollow 
was overgrown with grass and weeds. Conspicuous 
among the latter were the sturdy, wide-branching jim- 
son weeds, set full of round, spiny pods that were be- 
ginning to crack open and scatter their seeds. One 
day I came across a man hacking at these jimsons 
with his scythe. The sun was low in the west, and 
he was about to desist. " There's a heap to cut yit," 
he said. " I ought to 'a' started the job earlier." 

I was less interested at the moment in jimsons than 



Along the Juniata 2lg 

in finding lodging for the night, and I asked the man 
where such shelter was to be had. He replied that I 
might perhaps stay with him — but he would have to 
see his wife first. Then, after mentioning that his 
name was Werner, he led the way up a stony lane to 
a tidy farm-house on a knoll well above the river. We 
went into a shed kitchen at the rear of the dwelling, 
where we found the farmer's wife and daughter busy 
drying peaches in the stove oven. They agreed that 
I could stay, and I sat down by the fire. The room 
swarmed with flies and midges, but otherwise was not 
unattractive. 

Mrs. Werner from time to time stepped to an out- 
building for wood. The supply was nearly exhausted, 
and some of the sticks she brought in were pretty poor 
specimens. " Upon my word, I don't know what we 
shall do if we don't get more wood soon," she re- 
marked to her daughter. " My, oh my, that there 
cherry we're burnin' now is awful ! " 

They had no woodland on the farm, and hitherto 
had depended on line trees, orchard trees that had 
passed their usefulness,' and other waste about the 
place. But these resources had of late been practically 
exhausted, and Mr. Werner was planning soon to row 
up the river in partnership with a neighbor and collect 
a lot of old railway ties that had been dumped down 
the bank. They would fasten them together with 
wire into a raft and tow them down. 



230 



New England and its Neighbors 



I had not been long in the house before it began to 
get dark, and the daughter lit a lamp. Through the 

open door I 
could hear the 
cattle lowing in 
J^ the fields, some 
calves were 
running uneas- 
ily back and 
forth in the or- 
chard anxious 
to be fed, and 
the hens and 
chigkens were 
crowding to- 
gether on a pile 
of rails just out- 
side the picket 
fence that sur- 
rounded the 
yard, peeping 
c o m f o r t a b 1 y 
when things 
were settling to 
their wishes 
and uttering 
sharp notes of alarm and protest when matters were 
otherwise. 




Childhood Treasures 



Along the Juniata 231 

At length a boy of sixteen or seventeen appeared, 
went to the pump on the borders of the barn-yard, and 
labored at the handle until he had water enough in the 
accompanying trough for the two mules and span of 
horses that were kept on the place. Then he called 
the dog and went after the cows. By the time he 
returned, his mother had set the potatoes and beef fry- 
ing for supper. She now left her daughter to finish 
while she took a pail and went to the barn to help 
milk. All the farmers' wives in the region milked. 
Usually the work was shared with the men, but on 
some farms it fell to the women altogether. The girls 
learned to milk as a matter of course and were said to 
enjoy it. The care of the garden was another task 
with which the women had much to do. The men 
ploughed or spaded the plot in the spring, but the 
planting, hoeing, and gathering of produce was rele- 
gated to the wives. None of the field work was done 
by the women ordinarily, and yet they were very apt 
to help during haying and harvesting, in seasons when 
hired men were scarce. 

The milk of the Werner farm went to a creamery. 
It was collected daily and the skim milk returned. 
Just then the price paid was one and one-half cents a 
quart, and it rarely went above two cents. As soon as 
Mrs. Werner finished milking and had washed her 
hands at a bench outside the door, she resumed supper 
preparations, and we .presently gathered at the table. 



232 



New England and its Neighbors 



The clock struck eight while Mr. Werner was asking 
the blessing. " It's later'n it is usually at this time," 
said he, " but we been extra driven with work to-day. 




Farm Market W agons 

Help yourself," he added, making a little gesture 
toward the food. " We ain't much for waitin' on 
folks." 

After supper the women cleared the table, washed 
the dishes and the milk-pails, and attended to the dry- 
ing peaches. The boy went off to another room to 
study his algebra lesson for the next day at school. 
Mr. Werner and I sat and talked. " We have to 
work pretty hard," he said, "and we'd ought to keep 
a hired man, but we can't afford it. I've had bad luck 
this year. I lost a good young horse in the spring, and 
then come July I lost most half of my young cattle. 
The cattle was with other young stock from the neigh- 



Along the Juniata 2^2 

bors out on a mountain pasture. We paid the owner 
of the land for the grazing privilege, and he was to look 
after the cattle ; but he was careless and a good many 
of 'em got into a ravine between two ridges and couldn't 
find their way out. There wa'n't no feed, and they e't 
laurel. That poisoned 'em and they died. I ain't had 
no such bad luck since the flood." 

" The flood ! When was that ? " I inquired. 

"In 1889," was the reply. "The Juniata ain't 
naturally a deep stream. You could wade it almost 
anywhere, though you might get your shirt collar wet 
in some places. But when we had the big flood, you 
couldn't 'a' touched bottom with a fifty-foot pole. It 
rained for three days about the first of June, and the 
last night o' the rain it come down in slathers. We 
could hear it leakin' in the garret, and my wife, she 
kind o' thought we better get up and see to things. 
I wish we had. When we looked out in the mornin' 
the river was way out o' the banks, and the water was 
beginnin' to come into the lower side o' the yard. It 
was risin' fast, and we stepped aroun' lively. We got 
some o' the furniture upstairs, and I turned the stock 
out toward the higher land. Come nine o'clock we 
couldn't stay no longer, and I had to lay boards from 
the piazza for the women to walk on, and when I left, 
last of all, I had to wade up to my waist. 

" My cows was all saved, but my hogs didn't have 
no more sense' n to swim back to the pen, and they 



234 New England and its Neighbors 

was all drownded but one. The chickens was bound 
to stay too. They got onto the manure heap in the 
barn-yard and sailed away with it. All my sheds and 
most o' the fences floated off. The barn stood on a 
little higher groun' than the rest o' the buildings, but it 
was undermined and was left in such bad shape I had 
to build a new one. The only thing that kep' my 
house from goin' was gne o' those big old chimneys 
built right in the middle of it. Why, in that flood, if 
we was settin' where we are now, we'd be way under 
water. It come within three inches o' the ceilin'. 
Everything on this floor was about ruined. 

" The river was full of all sorts of things, and the 
bridges was all swep' away and the crops spoiled, and 
it was terrible. It was that flood that did up our canal. 
There was a canal-boat tied right about opposite our 
house when the storm begun, and as the water riz they 
kep' shiftin' the boat until they got it away out back 
of the house in the orchard where they hitched it to 
the trees. The river was only out of its banks two or 
three days, but the walls o' the canal was broken in lots 
o' places and other damage done to it, and the com- 
pany just left it as it was. Yes, that was a right smart 
of a flood." 

At the conclusion of this narration Mr. Werner 
conducted me to my room. All was oblivion after I 
retired until about four in the morning, when I heard 
the farmer calling to his son from the foot of the 



Along the Juniata 235 

stairs in slow cadence, " Fred, Fred, Fred ! do you 
hear me ? " 

" Uh-h-h ! " grunted Fred, sleepily. 

" Come awn ! " 

A pause and no response. 

" Fred, Fred, Fred ! do you hear me ? " 

"Uh-h-h!" 

" Come awn ! Don't pull the covers over you ! " 

Silence and a repetition of the above dialogue with 
slight variations continued for fully five minutes. 
Then the father went out to the barn and I dropped 
off to sleep. So did Fred, no doubt, for a half-hour 
later the parental voice resumed its appeal from the 
foot of the stairs. 

" Fred, Fred, Fred ! do you hear me ? " 

"Uh-h-h!" 

" Come awn ! " etc., as before. 

At length the father a second time went out, but 
stopped in the yard and added a few supplementary 
calls. Still Fred slumbered, and presently in came his 
father from the barn again. He was ominously silent, 
and he did not stay below. I heard him ascend the 
stairs with wrathful footfalls, enter Fred's room, and 
haul the young man out of bed by main force. I won- 
dered whether he did this every day. 

By breakfast time at half-past six all the barn work 
was done, and the brimming pails of milk were stand- 
ing at the kitchen door waiting to be strained. Fred 



2^6 New England and its Neighbors 

came in a little late. He had been to the river with 
his gun, hoping to shoot a duck. 

" No, I didn't get nawthing," he said in response to 
a question of his sister's, as he carried a basin of water 
from the back-room pump to the bench outside. 
Then he spit vigorously, washed his hands and face, 
and spit again. Expectoration was the Alpha and 
Omega of everything he did. 

" No, I didn't get nawthing," he repeated when he 
sat down at the table, " but I see a loon. I didn't 
meddle with him, though." 

" Why not ? " I inquired. 

" Well, I had some experience with one last year. 
He was swimmin' in the river, and the boys all got 
out their guns and he had some fun with us. He'd 
dodge quicker'n lightnin'. By the time our shot got 
to him, he'd be out of sight and the ripples circlin' 
away from where he'd dove. I had a rifle, and I thought 
that would fetch him, sure, but I fired more'n twenty 
times and never hit him only once, and all I did then 
was to snip off a few feathers." 

Mr. Werner did not quite approve of Fred's hunt- 
ing. " We use to have great flocks of ducks fly up 
and down this river," he said. " There'd be twenty 
or thirty or more in a flock. Now, we think it's a big 
flock if we see half a dozen, and we don't have wood- 
duck any more, but only fish-ducks that ain't good to 
eat, and a little duck they call the butter-duck. It 




One of the Street Pumps 



Along the Juniata 237 

don't make no difference, though. Every one's boun' 
to shoot, and they fire away more lead at the ducks, 
tryin' to hit 'em, than those they get are worth — a 
good deal." 

Across the river from the Werners' was a village 
where I spent some time after I left the farm-house. 
Like the other hamlets I saw in the valley, this village 
had a look distinctly Teutonic and foreign. Its 
narrow streets, its stubby, cut-back trees, its paved 
walks and gutters, and general stiffness were reminis- 
cent of Holland, yet it lacked Dutch cleanliness, and 
was tinged with an unthrifty decay and dilapidation. 
Among the wooden houses crowding close along the 
walks were many small stores and shops which earned 
their proprietors a meagre living by serving the tribu- 
tary farming region. The farm buggies and buck- 
boards, carryalls, market and lumber wagons came and 
went, but were never numerous enough to greatly 
enliven the place or to very much disturb its tranquil 
repose. Hitching-places, invariably in the form of 
wooden posts with iron rods connecting the tops, 
were provided in front of or near by all the public 
buildings and larger stores. 

The walks were sometimes of boards, but oftener 
were of brick or rough, irregular slabs of flagging. 
At intervals on them were great wooden pumps that 
each served a number of neighboring families. But 
perhaps the most interesting feature of the town, and 



23 8 



New England and its Neighbors 



one calculated to help immensely the village gossip and 
sociability, was the porch that projected from nearly 




On a Village Sidewalk 

every house front, and which rarely failed to have a 
seat flanking the door on either side. These seats 



On the Juniata 



239 



were permanent, each a short settee with room for two 
persons. They looked very domestic, and were sug- 
gestive of much chatting of a placid sort, and of the 
calmness and phlegmatic ease that seemed to charac- 
terize the people not only of the hamlet but of the 
entire district. This staidness of demeanor on the 
part of the inhabitants and the gentle aspect presented 
by nature were not at all what I had anticipated. In- 
deed, I found little either in the local life or in the 
appearance of the river and the country bordering to 
recall the wild romantic flavor of that favorite song of 
a half-century ago, " The Blue Juniata." 




The Juniata 



XI 



DWELLERS AMONG THE CATSKILLS 




S 



EPTEMBER 

had arrived, and 
the Catskill farm- 
ers were cutdng their 
corn, digging their po- 
tatoes, and getting in 
their late millet. As 
for the summer peo- 
ple, they had nearly all 
returned to the cities, 
and the heights and 
valleys had taken on a 
touch of loneliness, and 
the hotels and vaca- 
tion cottages looked 
dismally empty. The 
chill of autumn was in 
the air, but there had 
been no frosts of any 
severity. The fields 
were still noisy with the drone of insects, and the 
chestnut burs were as yet prickly green balls with no 

240 



Old-i'ashioned Churning 



Dwellers among the Catskills 241 

hint of cracking, though the nuts within were mature 
enough to be toothsome to the ever hungry small 
boy. That the youngsters had begun to knock off 
the burs from the lower branches, and pound them 
open with stones, was plainly evidenced by the broken 
twigs and other litter under the roadside trees. 

My first long walk in the Catskills was up a half-wild 
glen that wound back among the mountains from one 
of the larger valleys for a distance of five or six miles. 
Snyder Hollow, as this glen was called, was hemmed 
narrowly in by wooded ridges, and sometimes the trees 
crept down and took full possession of all save the tiny 
ribbon of the highway. But more commonly the road 
was bordered by diminutive meadow-levels and strips 
of cultivated hillside, and there would be an occasional 
small dwelling. Most of the houses were of weather- 
worn gray and had never been painted. Others, either 
as a result of a streak of prosperity with which fortune 
had favored their owners, or in response to the influence 
of summer boarders, had been furbished up and en- 
larged. But however commendable their furbishing 
in augmenting the general tidiness and comfort of the 
homes, those that were unimproved had a picturesque 
charm their more favored neighbors could not rival. 
One such that attracted my attention particularly on 
my way up the glen was a little red house perched on 
a slope high above the road. In the depths of the 
ravine below was a hurrying trout stream, and this 



242 New England and its Neighbors 

chanced to be spanned just there by a bridge. I con- 
cluded to sit down on the bridge to rest and see more 




Digging Potatoes in a Weedy Field 
of the little house up the hill. Across its front ex- 
tended a rude piazza with a board roof. The piazza 



Dwellers among the Catskills 243 

served as a shelter for the family tubs, and on the 
floor near the tubs some tomatoes were spread to 
ripen. A woman in a calico sunbonnet was the only 
person I saw about the place. She came out from 
the kitchen door and descended a steep path to the 
barn, near the stream. Shortly afterward, as she was 
returning with a pail in either hand, a buckboard 
driven by a young man came along the road and 
stopped. 

" Hello, Jane ! " the occupant of the buckboard 
called out to the woman with the pails. 

" Hello, Bill ! " she responded. 

" How are you ? " he continued. 

" First rate ; how's yourself? " 

" Oh, jus' so, so." 

" Ain't your sprained ankle gettin' along ? " 

" It's better, but it's purty weak yit. Any word 
from Johnny ? " 

" Yes, we had a letter day 'fore yisterday, and he'll 
be here by noon to-day, if I ain't mistaken." 

"Well, you tell him I'm comin' round to see him." 
And the man drove on, while the woman toiled up the 
hill with her two pails and entered the kitchen. 

Halfway between the house and the barn was a tall 
butternut tree with a grindstone, a sawhorse, and a 
meagre woodpile under it. The woman presently 
paid a visit to the woodpile and carried ofi^ an armful 
of sticks for her fire. 



244 New England and its Neighbors 

Next she came forth with a basket, retraced her steps 
to the tree, and picked up a peck or so of the butter- 
nuts. These she spread to dry on a thin slab of stone 
laid over the top of a barrel. Meanwhile the hens had 
gathered around her, hopeful of a feed, and she shooed 
them away with her apron. 

Beside the stoop at the back door was set a water- 
pail into which an iron pipe discharged a copious jet 
of spring water. The sight of this water direct from 
the unsullied hills with its suggestion of coolness and 
purity made me thirsty, and I at length decided to ask 
for a drink. By the time 1 had climbed the hill to the 
house, the woman had returned to the kitchen, and I 
found her starting to make butter in a great upright 
wooden churn. She had a poor opinion of butter 
made in a churn turned by a crank, and declared she 
couldn't abide the taste of it. The only right way to 
get the best butter was to paddle the cream up and 
down in one of these old-fashioned barrel contrivances. 

In response to my request for water she got a 
tumbler from the cupboard and accompanied me out- 
side to fill it. While I drank she took up her broom 
and swept off the threshold, and then stood gazing down 
the valley. The outlook over the woodland glen, 
with its flanking of green ridges and the silvery stream 
twinkling into view here and there, was very beautiful, 
and I fancied she was admiring the scenery. But when 
I ventured the opinion that she must enjoy having 



Dwellers among the Catskills 



245 



a home in such a situation, she said that she was so 
used to the scenery round about that she never thought 
whether it was 
pretty or not, 
and she would 
much rather 
live in a village. 
She was watch- 
inor the road for 
her son. He 
had been work- 
ing in Massa- 
chusetts, but he 
was coming 
home to stay 
now. "It's a ter- 
rible place for 
malaria, Mas- 
sachusetts is," 
she informed 
me, " and he 
couldn't stand 
it there." 




A Home on the Mountain Side 



I went on presently and continued as far as " Lar- 
kin's," the last house, at the extreme end of the valley. 
The rhythmic beat of flails sounded from Larkin's barn 
and enticed me to make a call. The farmer, a grizzled, 
elderly man, and his son were threshing buckwheat on 



246 New England and its Neighbors 

the barn floor. They dealt with about a dozen of the 
brown bundles at a time, standing them on end in 
regular order three feet or so apart, and giving the tops 
of each in turn a few judicious raps with the flails that 
set the dark kernels flying in all directions. As soon 
as a bundle that the threshers were belaboring toppled 
over, the blows became more energetic, and it was well 
cudgelled from end to end. To do the job thoroughly 
the bundles were turned and rethreshed once or twice, 
and then the straw was pitched out into the barn-yard 
to rot for fertilizer. Every Catskill farmer has his 
buckwheat fields, and these he plans shall yield enough 
to make sure of a year's supply of buckwheat cakes 
and some additional grain for spring cattle feed. 

Larkin's cows were feeding in the home lot, and from 
time to time he looked forth from the barn door to see 
what they were about. They showed an inclination to 
visit the orchard, and when he discovered them getting 
too near the trees he sent his dog to drive them back. 
" We ain't keepin' only four cows now," he said. 
" We did have twelve or fifteen, but my wife 'n' me 
are gittin' old, and it was more'n she ought to do takin' 
care of the milk 'n' makin' the butter from so many, 
'n' I told her we'd go into sheep. You c'n see part o' 
my flock up there on the side o' the mountain. 1 
always intend to have a bell on one o' my sheep, but 
I don't hear nawthin' of it to-day, 'n' I guess it's got 
lost off. A bell's quite a help in finding your sheep, 



Dwellers among the Catskills 



247 




The Buckwheat Thresher — Fair Weather or Foul ? 

and, besides, it keeps 'em together. They don't never 
stray away very far from the bell sheep, 'n' if you don't 
have no bell, they git scattered and can't find each 
other." 



248 New England and its Neighbors 

Larkin's farming was rather crude and so was that 
of all the Snyder Hollowites. I wanted to see some- 
thing that smacked less of the wilderness, and after I 
finished my wanderings in the glen I took a train and 
went west into the dairy country on the farther 
Catskill borders. The sun had set, and it was growing 
dark when I alighted at a little valley town and 
looked about me at the big hills mounding on every 
side, 

"Where are the best farms here ? " I asked a young 
fellow loitering on the station platform. 

" Wal," he responded, "the best farms around here 
are up at Shacksville." 

" How large a place is Shacksville, and how do I 
get there ? " I questioned. 

" It ain't no place at all," was the reply. " It's just 
farms. It's 'bout three miles thar by the road; but 
you c'n cut off a good deal by goin' cross-lots." 

" How about lodging ? " 

" No trouble about that. Jase Bascom'll keep you. 
Do you see that signal light right up the track thar ? 
A lane goes up the hill whar that light is, and it ain't 
more'n a mile 'n' a half to Jase's by it." 

" Could I find my way ? " I inquired doubtfully. 

" Oh, yes ! They drawed wood down thar last 
winter, 'n' they put chains on their sled runners for 
brakes, 'n' that tore up things consid'rable, so't the 
track's plain enough. It takes you straight up to the 



Dwellers among the Catskills 249 

hill road, and then you turn to the left, and Jase's is 
the fust house. You'll know the house when you git 
to it by its settin' up on kind of a terrace, and havin' 
two barns across the road." 

Thus directed, I walked up the track to the signal 
light, crawled through a pair of bars, and found a 
rutted, unfenced trail leading up a great pasture hillside. 
At first it was easily followed, for much of the earth 
that had been torn up by the chain brakes had washed 
away from the steep incline and left a waste of stones. 
I toiled on for a half-hour, and reached the top of the 
rise. The darkness had been increasing, and when at 
this point the ruts and stones merged into unbroken 
turf, I could not descry whither the track led. A 
faint new moon shining in the hazy sky helped some 
in revealing the lay of the land, but everything was 
strange to me, and my bearings were a good deal in 
doubt. Presently I came to a patch of woodland, 
which, so far as I could discover, was perfectly pathless. 
I did not care to stumble about at random in its dense 
shadows, and 1 kept along its borders until it was 
passed. 

Now I began crossing open, stone-walled fields. 
The walls were a nuisance. Their sturdy barriers net- 
worked the whole upland, and I was constantly brought 
to a standstill by them and had to put my toes into 
their niches and scramble over. After a while I 
cHmbed into a broad cow lane. Surely, that would 



250 New England and its Neighbors 

take me to some habitation, and I stepped along briskly. 
Yes, at the end of the lane I came to a group of farm 
buildings — a barn looming against the sky close at 
hand, and a house and sheds among the trees just down 
the hill. But no light shone from the house windows, 
and the weedy barn-yard showed that the place was 
deserted. 

I searched about in the gloom and found another 
lane that apparently afforded egress, and I followed it 
over the gray hills for a mile. Then it joined a high- 
way, and my spirits rose. Not far distant was a house 
on a terrace, and two barns stood opposite, across the 
road. It must be Jase Bascom's, I thought, A dog 
began barking warningly and came down into the 
roadway and confronted me ; but a sniff or two seemed 
to reassure him, and he ceased his clamor. I went up 
the terrace steps, rapped at the door, and when it was 
opened asked for Mr. Bascom. 

He had gone to bed, I was informed ; but that did 
not prevent my arranging to stay for a few days. No 
one else had retired, and the rest of the family were sit- 
ting about the kitchen, except for the hired man, who 
was snoozing on the lounge. Supper had been eaten 
an hour or two previously, and the dishes had been 
washed and replaced on the long table. But now Mrs. 
Bascom and her two daughters hastened to remove the 
blue fly-netting that covered the table, and clear a space 
for me. They granted my request for a bowl of bread 






A Morning Wash at the Back Door 



Dwellers among the Catskills 251 

and milk, and added cookies and cake, and a square of 
delicious honey in the honeycomb. I had rye bread, 
as- well as wheat, and enjoyed its moist, nutty sweet- 
ness. This pleased Mother Bascom, who said, "Jason 
and me always uses rye, but the young folks think 
they can't eat nothin' but wheat." 

By the young folks she meant the three grown-up 
children who remained on the farm — Sarah, Ollie, 
and Eb. 

The kitchen was neatly papered, and the rough, 
warped floor was still bright with its annual spring 
coating of yellow paint. All around the walls were 
frequent nails, from which hung towels, hats, coats, etc. 
A big wooden clock stood on a shelf near the cellar 
stairway, and on a longer shelf back of the stove were 
a row of lamps, a match-box, and a stout hand-bell 
used to call the men to their meals. Behind the stove 
on the floor was a wood-box, close beside which, hang- 
ing on a nail, was a home-made bootjack. This was 
the especial property of Mr. Bascom, who continued 
to wear stout leather boots in winter and in wet weather. 
But what impressed me most in the furnishings of 
the room was its five cushioned rocking-chairs — just 
enough to go around the family and leave the lounge 
for the hired man. The father's chair was in a warm 
corner next the stove, and on the window-casing near 
at hand hung his favorite musical instrument — a jews'- 
harp. 



252 New England and its Neighbors 

The evening was cool, and presently Ollie went to 
the wood-box to replenish the fire. " Don't put in but 
one stick," directed her mother. " You know we got 
those apples drying in that there back oven, and if 
you make it too hot, they'll cook instead o' dryin'." 

" We had ought to have a new stove," declared 
Ollie. " The top o' this one is all warped and 
cracked with the fires we make in the winter." 

The stovepipe ran up through the ceiling, and I 
learned later that all the pipes in the house were 
arranged likewise. The house was built fifty years 
ago, and in those days when stoves had recently 
superseded fireplaces it was thought quite sufficient 
to have the chimneys begin either in the garret or 
near the ceiling in the chambers. If it was the latter 
alternative, a narrow cupboard was usually constructed 
beneath. 

" Can you keep a fire in the kitchen stove over 
night ? " I inquired. 

" No," replied Mrs. Bascom, " but we can in the 
settin'-room stove. We got a big sheet-iron stove 
in there, and all we have to do is to put in chunks 
and shut the dampers tight." 

" I must git me a half pound o' powder next time 
I'm down to the village," remarked Eb after a pause. 
" I might want to go huntin' some lowery day." 

" What do you hunt ? " I asked. 

" Oh, mostly squirrels and pa'tridges just now. A 



Dwellers among the Catskills 253 

little later we'll be on the lookout for foxes. We got 
a good hound to trail 'em, and last winter we shot 
seven. Their skins was worth a dollar 'n' a half to two 
dollars. Coons is good game, too. We git as many 
as eighteen or twenty some years, and then ag'in not 
more'n three or four. They fetch about a dollar. 
I s'pose we make more money out o' skunks as a rule 
than anything else. One year me 'n' another feller 
got seventy-eight. Part of 'em we trapped, but the 
most we got by diggin'. Every thaw in the winter 
they'd come out, and we'd track 'em to their holes. 
The snow was deep, and not much frost in the 
ground, and it wa'n't as hard diggin' as you might 
think. There was one hole we found twelve in. 
You know they don't make their own holes, but use 
those the woodchucks have dug. Sometimes we'd 
find woodchucks in the same hole with the skunks. 
They wouldn't live right alongside o' the skunks, 
though, but in a branch passage. Skunk skins 
fetched from thirty-five cents to a dollar 'n' a quarter 
that year, 'n' we averaged sixty or seventy cents, I'll 
warrant ye. 

" Wal," said Eb, with a yawn at the conclusion of 
these particulars, " I guess it's bedtime. We don't 
stay up very late here, for father's callin' us to git up 
about the middle o' the night." 

By the time I was out the next morning Mrs. 
Bascom and OUie were coming in from milking. 



254 New England and its Neighbors 

Their outer skirts were tucked up, and they wore big 
aprons and sunbonnets. These two never failed to 
help the men milk, but the other- daughter stayed 
indoors getting the breakfast. Practically all the 
women in the region milked, though the young girls 
were beginning to question its being one of their 
duties. For instance, at the next house up the road 
was a maiden who had " learnt to play on the pianner, 
and she won't go near the barn any more." 

The Bascoms had about four hundred acres, one- 
third of it cultivated, and the rest pasturage and 
woodland. They kept a sleek herd of Jerseys, num- 
bering not far from fifty, and sold the milk to a 
creamery. The women before they returned to the 
house had assisted in unloosing the cows from their 
stanchions, and then Mr. Bascom, staff in hand, con- 
ducted the herd to " pastur'." He did all the driving 
by shouting. The cows strung along the road for a 
long distance, but they understood the farmer's voice, 
and he had no trouble in making them turn in at 
the proper barway. 

When he came back, he and Eb and the hired man 
gathered at a long wooden trough of flowing water 
just outside the back door and washed their hands 
and faces. 

" We don't keep it as tidy as we might out back 
thar," said Mr. Bascom, apologetically, to me as the 
family were sitting down at the breakfast table; " but 




On the Way to the Barn to help Milk 



Dwellers among the Catskills 2,55 

we ain't got time to tend to things the way they do 
round city houses." 

"Aunt Jessie ought to be here," remarked Sarah, 
and they all laughed. 

" She's a town woman, Aunt Jessie is," explained 
Mrs. Bascom, " and she's bound to have everythin' 
just so. Well, she was stayin' here last summer, and 
one day she took the butcher knife and went out and 
cut all the weeds growin' round the back door. Then 
she come in complainin' how dretfully her back ached. 
But nobody didn't ask her to cut the weeds. She 
might 'a' let 'em alone. They wa'n't hurtin' nothin'." 

After we had eaten breakfast Eb hitched a pair of 
horses into the market wagon and drove down to the 
village creamery three miles distant with the great cans 
of milk. This was a daily task of his the year through. 
Mr. Bascom before going out to work sat down in his 
rocking-chair and smoked a pipe of tobacco. " Eb's 
got to git his off horse shod," said he, " and he won't 
be home afore noon, I bet four cents." Apparently the 
others concurred in his opinion, for no one accepted this 
wager. 

Meanwhile, the hired man had shouldered a great, 
long-toothed reaper known as a " cradle," and gone 
off to cut a late field of buckwheat, and the women 
were hustling around doing the housework. Ollie 
got ready some mince-meat, Sarah started to make 
potato yeast with the intention that evening of 



2^6 New England and its Neighbors 

"sponging up some bread over night," and there 
was other baking and stewing going forward. Most 
of the summer housework was done in a rear ell of the 
dwelling, that until a few years ago was chiefly used as 
a dairy. In a corner of the main room had stood the 
big barrel churn, and the floor was deeply worn where 
the churn had been canted on edge, and rolled into 
position, and out again. From a shed adjoining, a 
wooden arm was still thrust through the wall ready to 
be attached to the paddle handle, and in the shed were 
wheels and cogs, and a revolving, slanting platform, on 
which two dogs used to be tied to walk up the incline 
until the churning was finished. Excepting Sunday, the 
cream was churned every day in the week. The butter 
was packed away in tubs that were stored on the cool 
floor of a cellarlike apartment running back into the 
bank at the far end of the dairy. 

Neighboring the ell were a number of rude little shan- 
ties — a hog-pen, corn-house, hen-house, and smoke- 
house. The last was only four or five feet square, and 
seemed to be a storage-place for rubbish as I saw it, but 
it was cleared out whenever ham, bacon, or beef was to 
be smoked. Against one side of it, two flour barrels 
were set up on slabs of stone. They had been freshly 
filled with ashes, and Mother Bascom was preparing 
to make soft soap. Near by was an enormous iron 
kettle half full of water with a fire burning under it. 

" Most folks leech their ashes the day aforehand," 




Making Soft Soap 



Dwellers among the Catskills 257 

Mrs. Bascom informed me, "and that's what you have 
to do if you use cold water, but I heat the water and let 
it run through the ash barrels in the forenoon. Right 
after dinner I put my grease and scraps into the kittle 
and pour in the lye, and by three o'clock I've got a 
barrel or more of soap made and am ready to go into 
the house. I leave the soap in the kittle till the next 
day. It bursts the barrel if it's put in afore it's cool. 
We store it down cellar. 'Twould be some handier to 
keep it upstairs, but 'twould freeze sometimes in winter 
^and dry up in summer." 

"This kettle looks like a very old one," I sug- 
gested. 

"We've had it ever sin' I c'n remember," responded 
Mrs. Bascom. "It's an old residenter. We use it 
mostly to boil swill in, but it comes handy in a good 
many ways. Years ago we boiled down sap in it ; but 
smoke and ashes and everything would get into the 
sap while 'twas boilin' and the sugar would be black as 
the kittle. It tasted all right, though." 

" Isn't it rather early in the fall to make soap ? " 
said I. 

"Yes, it is, and I've got plenty left from my spring 
makin'; but I was afraid it might be cold weather by 
the next new moon." 

" Does the moon affect it? " I asked. 

" Oh, yes ; if you make it in the old of the moon, 
you've got to boil and boil. Seems as though you'd 



258 New England and its Neighbors 

never git through. They say the best time to make is 
the full moon in May, but I ain't particular about the 
month myself." 

Another thing which Mrs. Bascom declared must be 
done with proper regard for the moon was hog-killing. 
" Kill a hog in the old of the moon, and it all goes to 
grease," she said. " The meat fries up and there ain't 
much left. I've heard sayings, too, about planting in 
the new of the moon, but the only thing we're careful 
about puttin' in then is cucumbers." 

From all that I heard in the Catskills I was im- 
pressed that old sayings were still accepted there among 
the farm folk with childlike faith. Another manifes- 
tation of their power in Mother Bascom's case had to 
do with a thrifty specimen of that odd plant known as 
hens-and-chickens, which she had growing in a pail be- 
side the front door. She said she picked off the buds 
as fast as they formed, because if they were to blossom 
and go to seed there would be a death in the family. 

The prevalence of rustic superstition was again 
emphasized when the hired man mentioned that the 
beech trees were unusually well loaded with nuts and 
quoted " they say " as an authority for this being pro- 
phetic of a hard winter. 

" Do you think that is so ? " I questioned. 

" Wal, I believe thar is a little into it," he replied. 

We were on the borders of the buckwheat field, 
and he was just preparing to return to the house for 



Dwellers among the Catskills 259 

dinner. Below us in the hollow was an old farm-house 
and a number of ruinous sheds. I asked about their 
owner. 

"Jim Gamp lives thar," said my companion, "but 
he rents the place from Andrew Fuller. Andrew 
Fuller is the big gun of this town and has got farms 
and mortgages all around. He's rather of an old hog, 
though, and when he gits a chance to skin a man he 
does it. Jim's been wantin' him to fix up the build- 
ings, but the old whelp won't do a thing. Jim's had 
to patch the barn roof with boards, but it leaks in spite 
of him. The barn's too small, anyway. There ain't 
room in it for his crops, and he has to stack a good 
share of his hay outdoors. I expect, though, he's 
kind o' shiftless, or he'd git along better. Do you see 
those oats just beyond the house ^ He got 'em into 
bundles and left 'em in the field. Fll bet ye they've 
stood there two months. They ain't good for much 
now — oats or straw, either." 

I spoke of the numerous lines of stone wall that 
crisscrossed Jim Gamp's land, and the hired man said 
that he had calculated there were miles of walls on 
every fair-sized farm in the neighborhood, and if the 
labor of building these walls was estimated at a reason- 
able rate it would often exceed what the entire farms 
would sell for to-day. 

" I notice you have a good deal of hawkweed in this 
buckwheat," I said as we started homeward. 



i6o New England and its Neighbors 



" Yes, it's gettin' in everywhar through the fields 
and pastur's. Its leaves spread out flat and cover the 
ground, so 't where it grows the grass is all killed 
out. It's the worst darn stuff you ever see in haying. 

There's a little 
fuzz or some- 
thing about it 
that's enough 
to make you 
cough yourself 
to death." 

We had left 
the buckwheat 
field now and 
passed through 
a gap in the 
fence and were 
on the highway. 
" Doesn't the 
snow drift on 
these roads ? " 
I asked. 

" It would if 
the farmers 

rJinding Indian Lorn i- i > 

didn t cut the 
brush along the sides. They're obliged to do that by 
law, and usually they cut it in the summer after hay- 
ing, and it lies then till spring, when they burn it ; 



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Dwellers among the Catskills 261 

but we hain't given this road along here no attention 
so far this year." 

It was not much travelled, and occasional strips of 
grass grew between the wheel tracks, while on either 
hand the briers, weeds, and bushes ran riot — rasp- 
berries and blackberries, milkweeds hung full of pods, 
jungles of tansy, elecampane, life-everlasting, Jacob's- 
ladder, fireweed, etc. In a ravine where we crossed a 
brook, were several clumps of skunk-cabbage which 
the hired man said had spread from Bill Hastings's 
meadow, up above. 

" Thar never none growed around here," he con- 
tinued, " until Bill fetched some of it or had it sent 
from his relatives in New Jersey. He set it out thar 
by the rear of his house and he uses the root for a medi- 
cine he takes. He offered to fix me some when I was 
feelin' a little off the hooks a while ago, and I told him 
if it was a question between dyin' an' skunk-cabbage I 
was ready to take the stuff; but bein' as I wa'n't that 
bad off yet I wouldn't trouble him. Bill's the greatest 
feller for swallerin' medicines ever I knowed — makes 
'em himself out of weeds and things. He was stewin' 
up some leaves o' this here elecampane t'other day 
when I was to his house. Goin' to try it for his liver, 
1 believe. It must be pretty bitter, for I never saw 
nawthin' would eat elecampane leaves till the grasshop- 
pers was so blame thick this summer. They trimmed 
it up some. They e't tansy, too — e't it bare to the 



262 New England and its Neighbors 

stalks. We're always havin' some pest nowadays. 
Have you noticed how many dead trees there are 
scattered through the woods ? They'll give ye an idee 
o' what the forest worms done here last year. They 
stripped the woods so't there wa'n't hardly a leaf left." 

Just then the hired man stopped and pointed to a 
slender sapling growing out of the roadside wall. It 
was loaded with tiny scarlet fruit. "I'm goin' to 
have a few o' them thar pin-cherries," said he, and he 
pushed through an intervening clump of sumachs and 
pulled off a handful. " That's robbin' the pa'tridges 
o' their winter provender," he remarked as he shared 
his spoils with me, " but I guess they'll stan' it." And 
we plodded on, nibbling at the sour little globules 
until we reached the house. 

Such walks as this along the upland roadways were 
a constant pleasure during my stay at the Bascoms'. 
There was only one thing I enjoyed better, and that 
was to sit in the lee of a stone wall in lazy contempla- 
tion of the landscape. We were having genuine au- 
tumn weather — chill air and a blustering wind, sailing 
clouds and bursts of sunshine. Tinges of red and 
gold were beginning to appear in the trees, and nearly 
everything in the plant world had gone to seed. Yet 
the fields were still alive with strident insects, the flies 
and bees buzzed cheerfully, and in the quiet of my 
loitering places I was sure to be visited by certain in- 
vestigating ants and spiders. The country I over- 



Dwellers among the Catskills 



263 



looked was one to fall in love with — great rounded 
hills, their summits wooded, and their slopes and the 
valleys laid off endlessly in green fields and pastures. 
How beautiful it all was, and how grateful the shelter 
of those brown, lichened walls ! 




Considering 



XII 



A CANAL-BOAT VOYAGE ON THE HUDSON 




Trading with a Buniboat 



E 



VER since I 
have known 
the Hudson as 
a real Hve river and 
not simply as a crooked 
streak on the map, I 
have had the wish to 
gain a closer acquaint- 
ance with the life on 
the canal-boats, whose 
long, lazy tows are one 
of the stream's notable 
features. Each even- 
ing, in the warm- 
weather months, a tow 
of these deep - laden 



craft just out from the Erie Canal leaves Albany for 
New York. 

They always make the trip back and forth in the 
wake of a steam vessel. One might fancy they would 

264 



A Canal-boat Voyage on the Hudson 265 

journey southward drifting with the current, but the 
river is too slow even for canal-boats, its progress 
seaward being barely eight miles a day. As you watch 
the tows from the shores you see people on the boats, 
you see little cabins at the sterns with stovepipes stick- 
ing out of the roofs, and you see many lines of washing 
flying. The tows, indeed, are floating villages, and 
there is a touch of romance about them that stirs the 
onlooker's gypsy blood at once. 

With me, at any rate, the impulse to make a voyage 
on a tow was very strong. Here was the chance to 
see a novel phase of life, and that amid the famous 
scenery of the Hudson. If the canal-boat folk would 
take me, I would make one trip down the river, at 
least. 

It was late in the afternoon, and I was in Albany 
wandering along the wharves. The day was dull, and, 
to a stranger, the high, rusty warehouses and breweries 
flanking the river were depressing. A number of canal- 
boats were moored along shore, some low and snug, 
some loaded high with an unwieldy bulk of lumber 
or hay. There was not much going on aboard them. 
Two or three men were doing odd jobs about the 
decks, and a woman in a pink waist was standing at a 
cabin door and looking out on the river. The only 
attention I got was from a lad dozing on a cabin roof, 
who, at sight of my valise, roused up and asked what 
I was peddling. Things were equally quiet on the 



266 New England and its Neighbors 

wharves. A few boys and men were loitering about, 
but there was no stir, no activity, not even in the vicin- 
ity of the frequent corner saloons. 

I was half wishing to give up the trip, when three 
canal-boats arrived from up the river, and the tug in 
charge pushed them in to the wharf near where I 
stood. I spoke to a man who jumped on shore with 
a rope, and he pointed out one of the rough, sun- 
burned working-men on the boats and said that was the 
" captain " — he was the man who owned the three 
boats, and if I wanted to go to New York he was the 
one to talk with. 

The captain, who in dress and looks was no differ- 
ent from his fellows, proved friendly, and was perfectly 
willing I should go down the Hudson on his vessels. 
I offered to pay my fare, but he said " No " emphati- 
cally, and added: "I don't want any money. It's no 
trouble. Most of my crew left when we got to the 
end of the canal, and there's room enough. But you'll 
have to take things as they are. I can't answer for 
what your bed'll be. Like enough it isn't fit for you, 
and then again it may be all right. It's just as the men 
left it, and they're sometimes pretty dirty fellows." 

But I could go. That was a relief, for the uncer- 
tainty of ways and means when one is starting out on 
such an expedition always keeps one's spirits at a low 
ebb. I did not worry much over possible hardships. 

" I don't know how you'll manage about your 




The Call to Dinner 



A Canal-boat Voyage on the Hudson 267 

meals," the captain continued. " Usually I have my 
wife and children along, but this time I've got a house- 
keeper. My wife took sick last month and she stayed 
at home this trip ; so I had to get Mrs. Libbey to 
cook and tend to the other work, and I don't know 
how she'll feel about taking a boarder. Perhaps she'll 
think she has enough to do now. You'll have to fix 
that with her. The best way is to speak to her your- 
self when you find her out on deck. If she don't 
want the job, why, you can get all you want to eat 
to-morrow from the bumboats." 

With this the captain turned to his work. I did not 
want to run the risk of going hungry till to-morrow 
and leave the chance of getting something then to the 
" bumboats," whatever those might be. So I went on 
shore and visited a meagre little grocery not far away, 
where I bought a supply of cookies and a can of salmon. 
With these I thought I could hold body and soul 
together the entire trip if necessary. 

The weather was threatening, and evening came 
early. Lanterns were lit on the boats, and lights 
twinkled out one by one all about the river and along 
the shores. Presently a horn blew, and the cap- 
tain and the two men, Duncan and Hugh, who 
made up the river crew, strolled down into Mrs. Lib- 
bey's cabin on the best boat to have supper. I was on 
the point of going after my can of salmon and bag of 
cookies when the captain reappeared and invited me to 



268 New England and its Neighbors 

come in and eat with the others. He said he had fixed 
things with Mrs, Libbey, and I could pay her for 
my board whatever I saw fit when we reached New 
York. 

This made me one of the family, and I followed the 
captain's lead and crooked myself down into the cabin. 
The ceiling barely missed one's head, the walls were 
honeycombed with cupboards and drawers, and there 
was a folding bed in one corner and a cook-stove in 
another. The floor was covered with oil-cloth, and the 
whole place was neat and orderly. The table filled 
the middle of the room. Most of the chairs were 
nothing but backless camp-stools that could be closed 
up and tucked away when not in use. The table was 
not so large but that everything on it could be reached 
without much stretching, and I was invited to draw up 
and help myself. We had beans, meat, potato, bread 
and butter, crackers, and tea ; and the fare right through 
the voyage was plain and coarse, but not unwholesome. 
The canal-boat people were inclined to neglect their 
forks as conveyances for food, and each reached his 
own knife to the butter-plate from time to time. How- 
ever, these customs are not peculiar to canal-boats. We 
four men left little spare room at the table, and Mrs. 
Libbey sat back near the stove and chatted, and saw 
that our cups were kept filled with tea. 

By the time I returned to the deck preparations were 
being made to start. Dusky figures were moving 



A Canal-boat Voyage on the Hudson 269 

about on the boats and on the wharves, conspicuous 
among them a short, slouch-hatted man who, with much 
swearing and violence of manner, was making up the 
tow. There were many lights on the river — yellow, 
red, and green. Tugs were moving hither and yon, 
whistling and puffing, and in the hazy air of the half- 
clouded evening the scene seemed full of mystery and 
strange noises. 

At eight a great steamer just starting for New York 
left its pier a quarter of a mile above, and its mountain 
of lights drifted down past us. Except for the tall 
smoke-stacks towering above the pile, its size and its 
wealth of glow and glitter made it seem, as seen from 
the humble canal-boats, a veritable " floating palace." 
On an upper deck was a search-light peering about 
with its one eye, flashing its bit of vivid illumination 
now on this side the river, now on the other, bringing 
out the color and form of all it touched with astonishing 
clearness amid the surrounding night. As soon ag the 
steamer reached the open river its engines began to 
pant, and it soon vanished on its swift course south- 
ward. 

Shortly afterward the shore-lines of our tow of canal- 
boats were cast loose, and we too were on our way down 
the river. But ours was not the easy flight of the 
brilliant passenger-boat that preceded us. Our long, 
clumsy tow was being dragged through the gray even- 
ing gloom by a single stout steamer, and the blunt, 



ayo New England and its Neighbors 

deep-laden canal-boats ploughed their way through the 
idun waters very heavily. In our rear the sparkle of 
the city lights slowly faded, and the glows in home 
windows on the wooded shores grew fewer and farther 
between. 

Our tow included between thirty and forty boats, 
made up in tiers of four abreast. The boats in each 
tier were snug together, and though they sometimes 
swung apart a foot or two, there was never much diffi- 
culty in stepping from one to the other. The captain 
I had adopted owned three of the boats in our tier, and 
the odd one was in charge of an elderly Frenchman, 
his wife, two dogs, and a cat. 

Responsibility was now past for the night, and it was 
not long before everybody turned in. I had a bunk 
in a little cabin at the rear of the middle one of our 
three boats. This cabin was a kind of store-room — a 
catch-all for every sort of rubbish. Here were pieces 
of harness, cast-off clothing, rags, tools, bolts, kerosene 
cans, a tub of paint, etc. It had various odors, and 
these were not improved when Duncan, my fellow- 
roomer, lit a stout tin lamp and turned it low to burn 
all night. The apartment was mostly below decks, 
and as for ventilation, one could about as well have slept 
in a dry-goods box with the cover on. 

My bunk looked short, but there proved to be a 
recess in the farther wall where I could stow away my 
feet. It was a bed without linen, and the coarse 



A Canal-boat Voyage on the Hudson 271 

blankets and bed-ticking pillow looked so uninviting 
that I concluded to sleep on top in the clothes I had 
on. A calico curtain was strung on a wire along the 
front of the bunk. This I drew, and, with the dim 
light of the lamp shining through it, and with the 
swash of the water around the stern of the boat sound- 
ing in my ears, I went to sleep. On the whole, things 
were very quiet, and, though the boat rolled a little and 
now and then softly bumped against its neighbor, the 
motion was so slight and we slipped along so smoothly 
that it was hardly different from being on land. 

When I clambered out on deck a little before six the 
next day, the weather was still dubious, and during the 
morning we had frequent scuds of rain. Toward noon 
a thunder-storm came rumbling down on us from the 
Catskills, but soon the sky showed signs of clearing, and 
the head wind which had been tossing the waves into 
whitecaps grew quieter. 

Right after breakfast Mrs. Libbey had taken every- 
thing out of her cabin that could be taken out, set up 
her wash-tub, and gone to washing. I suppose every 
other woman on the tow did likewise. The first day 
on the Hudson is always washing day, for on the sec- 
ond day the boats are in salt water, which sets back a 
hundred miles up the river. In the brighter spells 
between showers, clothes-lines had been hoisted on the 
decks and a few garments swung on them ; but with 
the first streak of sunshine after the thunder-storm. 



272 New England and its Neighbors 




Visiting 

tubs were brought up to the open air, the clothes-lines 
filled, and surplus garments were spread all about. 
The boats with this abounding bunting had quite a gala 
air. 

The men began the day by feeding and caring for 
the horses in the low stable-cabins at the bow of the 
boats. The trip back and forth on the Hudson and 
the stay in New York are the horses' vacation, and in 
spite of the narrowness of their quarters, they seemed 
contented enough ; yet it moved one's pity to see their 
galled shoulders and to see them cringe and plunge 
when the men touched their sores to wash them or rub 
on oil. Our captain had seven horses. On the canal 
they worked in two relays, three horses in one and four 
in the other. The boats kept going night and day, 
and it was steady work for the horses — six hours on 
and six hours off for all the week and a half it took 
to go through the canal. " Their shoulders get very 
tender," said Duncan. " Some of the horses, after they 



A Canal-boat Voyage on the Hudson 273 

have had their rest and start in to work again, will rear 
and kick, and it's all you can do to make 'em buckle 
down to pull — they're just that mean in disposition. 
Still, you can't blame 'em. They're just like folks, 
and a man with a sore toe would act worse'n they do. 
You see, their collars are bearing on their shoulders 
all the time for six hours, and the chafing makes so 
much heat that, with the sweat, it scalds them. If they 
could only stop once in a while and have the collars 
lifted up, so's to let the air under, they'd be all right." 

The canal-boat horses undoubtedly have a hard 
time, and it is the destiny of very many of them 
to be drowned by being dragged into the water by a 
fouled tow-line. When boats are passing each other, 
and the line gets caught, unless it is unsnapped at once, 
in go the horses. Sometimes the owner will leap into 
the water to try to cut them loose, but it is dangerous 
business. 

After the men finished caring for the horses, they 
turned their attention to cleaning the decks, which 
they said had got " grimmy with dirt and soot." They 
dipped up great quantities of water and dashed it all 
about the premises, and then scoured off everything 
with their brooms. This is a before-breakfast task of 
daily recurrence. The plentifulness of the water sup- 
ply seems to give the canal-boat folk the same mania 
for scrubbing that the Dutch have in Holland. They 
used it copiously for everything. When a man washed 



274 New England and its Neighbors 

his face he dipped up a brimming pail for the purpose ; 
and I suppose he would have used another pailful to 



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Drawing Water 

brush his teeth in, only that is an attention to the 
toilet usually dispensed with on the canal craft. 



A Canal-boat Voyage on the Hudson 275 

The general work of the day consisted in doing odd 
jobs of tinkering, putting things in order, pumping the 
water out of boats that leaked, mending harness, etc. 
But there was plenty of leisure, and there was a great 
deal of lounging and visiting. Hugh and Duncan 
found time to attend to various affairs of their own, 
and to read several chapters in some ragged paper 
novels. Hugh, just before he settled down to reading, 
invited me to call on him. He had slicked up the 
cabin where he slept and given its atmosphere an indi- 
viduality of its own by fumigating it with sulphur for 
the benefit of the cockroaches. Besides, he had 
scoured or mopped it out after some fashion, and it 
was so damp and chilly that he now concluded he 
would start a fire. He had tried to improve the 
appearance of his rust-coated stove by going over it 
with kerosene, and when he kindled the fire its oil- 
soaked surface began to smoke. In the depressions 
of the covers intended for the insertion of the stove- 
handle the kerosene had gathered in little pools, and 
from these slim tongues of flame leaped up. It was a 
curious-looking stove, and it sent out a curious-smell- 
ing smudge, but Hugh took it calmly. He was a 
great, stout, hardy fellow, not to be disturbed by trifles. 
He said he was going to the Klondike in the spring, 
and already could see himself in his mind's eye picking 
up the gold " nudgets " there. 

About ten o'clock in the morning I had a chance to 



276 New England and its Neighbors 

find out what a bumboat was. It came from some 
town on the distant shore — a rude httle steamer, not 
much larger than a good-sized rowboat, peddling vege- 
tables, fruits, butter, milk, and, in the season, ice cream 
and bottled drinks. It crept up to us piping its in- 
fantile whistle, and after fastening itself to the front 
tier of boats and doing what trading it could, cast 
loose, and with another announcement of attenuated 
toots, dropped back to the next tier. Our tow was a 
little world in itself These bumboats constituted our 
only connection with the rest of mankind, and the 
excitements of the voyage are so few that their visits 
were always welcome. The bumboats make the tows 
their chief source of income, but they also do trading 
along the wharves of their home towns and of villages 
neighboring. 

Each tier of the tow is separated from that in front 
and behind by six or eight feet of water. The space 
is spanned by a few strands of rope, but this makes so 
slight a connection that sociability with neighbors who 
precede or follow is to a large extent cut off. A man, 
if he chooses, can put one leg over a rope and hitch 
himself across the vacancy, but not many attempt this. 
Our captain was the only one I saw do it. I suppose 
there was no special danger, but I would prefer to have 
something else below me than that turmoil of water if 
I were to follow his example. He had put on a dress 
coat right after dinner, and crossed the rope, and spent 




^ 



rT 




Two Canal-boat Captains 



A Canal-boat Voyage on the Hudson 277 

half the afternoon roosted on a cabin roof talking with 
Captain Jones, who owned two boats in the tier ahead 
of us. 

Our social intercourse was mostly with the old 
Frenchman and his wife, who owned the antiquated 
ice-boat in our tier. Our folks visited with them back 
and forth by the hour. His strong point was politeness, 
and hers talkativeness. They did a great deal of scrub- 
bing during the day, and in the afternoon, when there 
was danger of running short of material to exercise 
their scrubbing energy on, the wife exhumed a rug 
of Brussels carpeting and laid it on the cabin roof 
The husband looked at her doubtfully out of the 
corner of his eye when she poured a pail of water over 
it. Then she rubbed on soap and scoured it with a 
brush, and next squeezed the water out with a bit of 
wood. After that she began at the beginning again, 
with the pouring on of water, and so she continued, as 
if bent on wearing the rug out. The man saw his roof 
getting dirty, and mounted it with his broom and swept 
it almost as assiduously as his wife scoured the carpet. 
Now and then he would pause and look at her specu- 
latively, as if it was beyond his ken what his wife's real 
intentions were with regard to that carpet. Once he 
inquired, mildly, if it wouldn't get dirty again, and she 
said yes, it would be just as bad as ever in a week. At 
this the man appeared a shade downcast, but he did 
not venture to question the wisdom of the labor. His 



278 New England and its Neighbors 

wife scolded him well from time to time for his clumsi- 
ness. He was rather stiff, but he meant well, and I 
thought she had an exaggerated idea of his incapacity. 
He had a placating tone and a placating manner, but it 
was apparently all lost on the woman. 

It is not simply adults who live on the tows, but 
whole families, from babies up to grandmothers ; and 
it seemed to me that, being always on the water, they 
were subject to peculiar dangers. I asked Duncan 
about this. It was in one of the morning showers, and 
he had got a pailful of suds from Mrs. Libbey, and 
brought it over to our cabin to do some washing. He 
fixed up a seat, put his dirty garments in the pail, and, 
after expressing a longing for a wash-board, scrubbed 
the clothes out on his knuckles. He said Mrs. Libbey 
was willing enough to wash for him, but he didn't want 
to be beholden to her. " If she did favors for me, 
she'd expect me to do 'em for her, and if I shouldn't 
do 'em, why, she'd chew about it somewhere." 

In reply to my question about the canal-boat dan- 
gers, he told how, two years before, two girls lost their 
lives. "They danced overboard," he said. "There 
was a fiddle playin' on the tier ahead, and they caught 
hold of each other for a little waltz, and one of them 
stepped over the side of the boat and she clung to 
the other, and they both went in and were drownded." 

Duncan now got up and put his head out of the 
hatchway. " Come here a minute," said he. 



A Canal-boat Voyage on the Hudson 279 

" You see that long, rocky island we're comin' to 
with the woods on it ? Well, it was right about oppo- 
site to that I had a child of mine drownded. I owned 
a boat in those days, and my wife and three children 
were on board. There was a bumboat come up along- 
side the outer boat, and I went to go over to it with 
one of the children, and my driver he took my little 
girl, and we were goin' to buy the children some candy; 
and when the man was steppin' across from one boat 
to another it must 'a' been the boats pulled apart and 
he didn't calculate right, and down they went. I never 
see it happen, and I didn't look around until I heard 
some one cry there was a man overboard. We got the 
man out, but my little girl never rose. She must 'a' 
went in under the boats. 

" We couldn't stop the tow, and I got off on the 
bumboat and stayed behind. It was eight days before 
we found the body. She'd be seventeen years old 
now, if she'd lived. That sickened my wife of boat- 
ing. She was always afraid we'd be losing our other 
two children ; so I sold out and bought a little ten- 
acre farm. I got six children now, and my wife thinks 
we better give 'em more education 'n they could get 
on the canal ; and so I earn money summers boating, 
while she runs the farm with the children, and I guess 
we'll give 'em some schoolin'. I didn't get much 
myself. I went on the canal when I was ten, and 
after I got to boatin' you couldn't dog me off it. 



2 8o New England and its Neighbors 

Well, I tell you, I get thirty-five dollars a month and 
board, and it's a steady job. There ain't many things 
you could do better in." 

With this he wrung out the pair of trousers he had 
been at work on and carried them up to the deck 
and hung them on the swaying rudder-handle. 

There was no pause in our voyage. Night and 
day alike we continued to toil steadily southward. 
The steamer, dragging us by three sagging tow-ropes, 
was so far on ahead that no sound came to us from 
it save when it whistled, but we could see the meas- 
ured sway of its walking-beam, and we could see the 
water breaking into foam beneath its paddles, and the 
smoke drifting away from its tall chimneys. 

On the morning of the third day, when I looked 
out soon after sunrise, I found New York had come 
into view, dim in the hazy south. We were passing 
the last of the Palisades, and I regretted to think that 
during the night we had gone by much of the river's 
finest scenery. The most impressive view of the 
trip was one I had had at Storm King the evening 
before, and I doubt if the whole length of the river 
affords anything finer. We had passed the twinkling 
lights of Newburg, and I had gone below to while 
away the evening, when the captain called to me. I 
had not thought the Highlands so near, and the sight 
from the deck was a surprise. The river had nar- 
rowed, and, on either hand, a rugged mountain 



A Canal-boat Voyage on the Hudson 281 

shouldered up into the sky. The full moon sailed 
among the clouds, and the great cliffs frowning down 
on our gloomy line of canal-boats were very striking 
and powerful. 

Through the early voyage the shores were monoto- 
nous, and, lower down, where we should have seen the 
blue ranges of the Catskills, the mists shrouded the 
distance completely. Frequent residences looked out 
on us from the wooded banks, and now and then we 
passed a town. Often a great ice-house would loom 
up at the water's edge, and on both sides of the river 
were lines of railroad tracks where the trains at close 
intervals were speeding along, sending out to us the 
faint rumble of their wheels and the sharp notes of 
their whistles. These were the chief land features, 
while such was the great size of the river itself that 
though it is a great highway, the craft on it seemed 
few and far between until we neared New York. 




The Sicamcr dragging the 1 u\ 



282 New England and its Neighbors 

We had the city in sight at dawn, but the tide was 
against us, and we were all the morning reaching our 
destination at its lower end. The sun shone clear 
and hot, and the glare of the white-painted boats, 
added to the heat, made the exposed deck rather 
uncomfortable. Still, there was a fascination about 
the approach to the city that made it impossible 
to stay long in the cabins. The multitude of build- 
ings, the shipping that crowded the miles of wharves 
and filled the wide river with the coming and going 
of vessels of all sorts and sizes, roused us and kept 
our interest on tiptoe. 

One member of our fleet's company I had seen little 
of heretofore, but to-day he was much in evidence. 
This was a young man who was a passenger like myself, 
only he was wholly penniless and slept under a manger 
among the horses. There he had dozed away most of 
the voyage. Hugh said the man was "working" his 
way to New York, but that must have been metaphor, 
for I never saw him do anything that looked like labor. 
The day previous I had learned that he had had nothing 
to eat since we left Albany, and that moved me to crawl 
down into his stable-cabin and offer my cookies and 
can of salmon. He accepted hungrily, and began to 
eat at once just where he was, under the manger. This 
last day he showed more spirit, and was out on deck in 
the sun watching the city with considerable interest. 
He was a seedy, shiftless-looking fellow. His cloth- 




House-cleaning Time 



A Canal-boat Voyage on the Hudson 283 

ing was dirty and ragged, his shoes were breaking out, 
his necktie was frayed, and his felt hat had holes worn 
through in the creases. He talked with the crew freely, 
and spoke of himself as a " prodigal son." He said 
his father was a New York broker and a man of wealth. 
He could imagine him with his arms open to receive 
him and ready to put a ring on his finger and kill the 
fatted calf " It's more likely, though," he added, 
" that I'm the fatted calf that'll get killed. Still, I 
haven't bothered the old gent for over a year now, 
and he ought to be thankful for that." 

There was a general effort on the part of the 
inhabitants of the tow to make a good appearance in 
our approach to the metropolis. Clothes-lines were 
taken in ; the rough, everyday working garments were 
changed for better, and most of the men took pains 
to shave. When you saw them at their best, they 
were by no means unattractive. 

On the whole, I got an agreeable impression of the 
canal-boat folk. There was a home air about them 
that was unexpected. They were hard-working and 
thrifty, and the drinking habit was the exception rather 
than the rule. To be sure, the men swore a good deal, 
even in their ordinary conversation, but they did this 
with no air of profanity. It was just an oil to the flow 
of their remarks. In their feeling it apparently made 
what they said clearer, and themselves more compan- 
ionable. The women, too, made free with slang and 



284 New England and its Neighbors 

spiced their remarks with " Gosh," " poor devil," 
" damn," and even rougher expressions, yet they were 
not without a certain refinement. 

Our captain was probably a fair example of the 
successful canal-boatman. He had started on the canal 
as a driver when ten years old. Now, at the age 
of thirty-five, he owned three boats that were worth 
on an average $2000 each, and he also owned a 
fifteen-acre farm. The farm produces hay enough 
to winter his horses and twenty others, and he values 
it at ^5000. He was sober and hard-working, and it 
is only such who ever rise to the ownership of boats. 

There is a rougher element on the canal. These are 
the "trippers" — men hired as drivers just for the 
passage through the canal. They are often hard 
characters with no more clothes than they wear on 
their backs, and, as soon as they are paid off, take a 
vacation and spend all their gains in a spree before 
they go to work again. " Yes," said Duncan, " soon 
as the trippers get their money they blow it all right 
in that same night. Next morning when they're sober- 
ing up, they'll do most anything to get some more 
drink. Why, one feller sold me a pair of rubber 
boots for a quarter, that he'd paid two-ninety for a 
few days before, but he said he was 'bliged to have 
the liquor anyhow." 

Most captains take no notice of Sundays, yet 
there are those who tie up on the Sabbath and go to 



A Canal-boat Voyage on the Hudson 285 

church. They will even lose three or four hours of 
Saturday rather than be where there is no church. 
But wages go on Sunday the same as week-days, and 
the average man sees a clear loss of five or six dollars 
in tying up, and he thinks he can't afford it. 

Some of the families winter on their boats lying at 
the wharves in New York City, and they say they do 
it very comfortably. Mrs. Libbey told of a friend 
who tried living in a tenement instead. The family 
paid eighteen dollars a month rent, and it was a 
crowded, stifling little place, not nearly so good as a 
canal-boat. 

The freighting season lasts from May to December, 
and in the cold weather the majority of the boat-folk 
are at their home villages in central New York. They 
don't work very hard in winter, they said, but just dress 
well and have a good time. The women, in particular, 
enjoy the winter. " The summer," said Hugh, " is 
all rain for them, but the winter is all sunshine." 

The men mostly marry girls brought up on the 
canal, and when they do pick out a girl unused to the 
boating environment they are apt to find they made a 
mistake, for she usually is not fitted for the life and 
" can't get to like it." 

Noon came, and we had arrived opposite the pictur- 
esque jumble of lofty buildings at the lower end of the 
city. A little later we were making fast to a pier down 
near the Battery, and I prepared to leave. Personally, I 



286 



New England and its Neighbors 



had received only kindness and hospitality on the trip, 
and the voyage had held so much that was novel and 
interesting that it was with real regret that I left the 
canal-boats and became an ordinary landsman once 
more. 




Arriving in New York 



XIII 



THE AUTUMN CATTLE SHOW 




I 



N New England's 
purely farming 
districts the cattle 
show is the one event 
of the year that attains 
to genuine greatness. 
It is in such districts 
you see it at its best 
— a rural picnic that 
draws to it the people 
of all the countryside. 
The towns and villages 
I am not sure that the 
ministers go, but the church elders are on hand with 
their fat cattle and all the varied farm belongings in 
which they take pride ; and so are their wives and 
daughters and other members of the family, even to 
the hired man. 

It is the social element which gives the fair its most 
vital attraction. The people come not so much because 

287 



The "Nigger" Target 
roundabout are depopulated. 



288 New England and its Neighbors 

of the races, the exhibits, and the pleasure-making 
contrivances, as because of the certainty of meeting 
all their friends and acquaintances. In the two days 
of the show they pick up more news than they would 
in months of ordinary days. " I ain't seen you sence 
the cattle show last year," you will hear one woman 
say to another, " Why don't you come and make me 
a call once in a while ? It ain't but eight miles." And 
when the preliminary whys and wherefores have been 
settled to mutual satisfaction they fall to detailing the 
happenings of the past twelve months, lingering with 
especial minuteness over the ravages of death and 
disease. 

Perhaps there is no better place to see the country 
fair than at Cummington, in western Massachusetts, 
a town that possesses the double distinction of having 
the cattle-show grounds of the district, and of being 
the birthplace of William Cullen Bryant. It lies 
among the tumbled hills which abound in that part 
of the state, and is far from railroads and large centres 
of population. The region for many miles around is 
one of scattered farms and little villages. Probably 
no town tributary to the fair contains much over one 
thousand inhabitants, and some fall a good deal short 
of that number. 

The fair is held the last of September. Autumn 
comes early on the hills. All the corn is cut and 
stacked in the fields. Nature's year's work is about 



The Autumn Cattle Show 289 

finished. Nearly all the banditti weeds and flowering 
plants of field and wood are weighted with seeds^ or 
the seeds have flown and only empty husks remain. 

The road by which I approached the fair-grounds 
led much of the way through the woodlands, orange 
and yellow with turning leafage. Dwellings were few 
and far between, and it was nothing unusual to drive 
for miles without seeing aught more closely related to 
a human habitation than a lonely gray sugar-house 
in a patch of rock maples. Sometimes a squirrel 
chattered at me, sometimes a crow flapped into view 
overhead, gave a disturbed caw or two, and hastened 
away, and once I roused a partridge that disappeared 
with a startled whir of wings. But as a whole the 
woods were very quiet. The last few miles of the 
way I did not lack company. There were teams 
before and teams behind — a long string of them 
climbing the final hill, bumping over the " thank-you- 
marms " and rattling across, one after the other, the 
frequent little wooden bridges that spanned the rivulets 
the road encountered. Most of them were family 
teams of two or three seats, but there were many top 
buggies cleaned up for the occasion, each holding " a 
fellow and his girl." Then there were the confirmed 
old bachelors, who rode alone ; and there was the 
more pronounced jockey element represented by men 
who usually brought along a single male companion. 
As I neared the grounds I began to see teams hitched 



290 New England and its Neighbors 

to the trees along the roadside. The owners were 
careful not to leave anything of value in their vehicles, 
and every man who had a whip that was worth stealing 
insured its safety by taking it along with him. When- 
ever and wherever you met him later in the day you 
would find him with the whip in his hands. 

The grounds with their one-third of a mile race- 
course lay in an elevated hollow of the hills that 
seemed to be the only spot in the region sufficiently 
level to lay out such a track. Immediately surround- 
ing were either rough depressions or rocky ridges, 
and some of this wild land was inside of the high 
board fence that engirdled the fair-grounds. 

By paying a little extra one was privileged to drive 
his team through the entrance gate and keep it on 
the grounds all day if he chose. A favorite resort of 
vehicles was a grassy hill that rose within the circle 
of the race-course. Here the wagons were left while 
the horses were led away to be hitched elsewhere. 

If you arrived after things got well going, you struck 
pandemonium the moment you passed through the 
wide wooden gates. " Fakirs " and travelling tradesmen 
had been coming by every road all the day before, and 
the centre of the grounds was now full of booths 
and tents, with an intermingling of peddling wagons 
and stands and amusement paraphernalia. The place 
was a great human beehive. Those who had come 
to make money strove to attract trade by continual 



The Autumn Cattle Show 



291 



shouting, and a brass band played enlivening strains at 
frequent intervals, while the crowd itself was in con- 
stant motion, and there was a never ceasing undertone 
of voices talking, calling, and laughing. It was a 
motley throng, 
including peo- 
ple of every 
age, from babies 
and toddlers up 
to nonagena- 
rians. Many 
of the folk were 
dressed taste- 
fully and in 
modern styles, 
but others, by ei^S" 
reason of care- P^>*^^ri. 
lessness or isola- 




tion or poverty, 
wore garments 

that were very Children Sightseers 

antiquated. Then, too, there seemed to be a curious 
difference of opinion as to whether winter or summer 
apparel was the more appropriate. 

Some of the attendants were strange-looking peo- 
ple, suggestive of caricature — raw, long-haired boys, 
gnarled men with quaintly trimmed beards, and faded 
women, the lines and expressions of whose faces 



292 New England and its Neighbors 

brought up before one visions of olden times. On 
the other hand, there were present more or less city 
folk, to whom a rural jollification of this sort was a 
very real pleasure. Another class of outsiders was that 
of the gentry politicians of the county, who had come 
to pull wires in anticipation of the approaching elec- 
tion, and to pose in the eyes of the public as genial 
good fellows. 

Wherever the crowd gathered thickest there hovered 
peddlers of pop-corn, peanuts, grapes, peaches, and five- 
cent cigars — the standard price at cattle shows. There, 
too, you found the man with the bunch of colored bal- 
loons. While in his hands they pulled jauntily sky- 
ward, but once transferred to the children they were 
very apt to soon burst or droop to earth. The itiner- 
ant hawker and distributor of happiness who seemed 
to be most successful was one who carried little striped 
whips, and squeaky whistles with rubber sacks on the 
end. " Catbags " was the expressive name of these 
whistles. You blew and distended the rubber, then 
took it away from your mouth, and the thing emitted 
a long, wailing piping quite enchanting to the ears of 
childhood ; but to older people the noise was rather 
distracting after it had been heard continuously for a 
few hours. 

Not all the interest was confined to the show 
grounds. Just outside, near the entrance, was a 
peculiar gathering of men who were getting all the 



The Autumn Cattle Show 293 

fun they could without going in. They were toughs 
and ne'er-do-wells who drove rusty, ancient vehicles 
and abused-looking horses, which they were always 




Without the Gate 

ready to swap or sell. Toward noon, when I went out 
for a stroll, most of the gang were collected about an 
old negro. He was sitting in a shaky buggy, and was 
trying to get an offer for his old white nag. " There 
ain't a blemish on him," the negro declared, and he 
cantered his steed down the road to show his paces. 

The dickering was long-drawn-out and resultless, 
and finally the negro said he must go home and get 
something to eat. As he started off, he remarked : 
" Well, I can't sell you this horse, gentlemen, an' I 
can't swap him. Nobody don't want such a horse 
'cause he's a poor horse." 



294 



New England and its Neighbors 



Cattle show gets its name from its exhibit of farm 
creatures, and these, either in pens or tied to lines of 
railing, occupied an acre or two on the inner borders 
of the race-course. About them the men gathered in 
force to discuss the merits of the various animals. 
Hence, in that vicinity you got a concentrated essence 
of Yankee smoking, spitting, and dialect such as it 
would not be easy to match the world over. 

The centre of interest for the women was a large, 
barnlike, two-story hall, the most prominent structure 




The Stage from the Neighbuiing Towii 

on the grounds. In it were exhibited a thousand and 
one products of housewifely art and of agricultural 
success. One section was devoted to flowers from 
home flower-beds. Some were in pails, some in pots, 



The Autumn Cattle Show 295 

and some in cheese-hoops and soap-boxes, and, besides, 
there were cut flowers in extraordinary bouquets — dec- 
orative erections that were certainly ingeniously and 
fantastically contrived if they were not as beautiful as 
the designers and constructors believed them to be. 
A few steps farther on and you were among the fruits 
and vegetables. Here was a great concourse of plates 
with fine apples, pears, peaches, or quinces on each. 
Then there were grapes, plums, strings of onions, 
heaps of beets, carrots, cabbages, and such things, and 
a squash calculated to make one gape with wonder at 
its immensity. Next in order was an exhibit of butter 
and of cheeses, the latter brown and wrinkled and rather 
unattractive outwardly, yet at the same time suggestive 
of a certain ripeness and inner richness. There were 
pickles and cans of preserves and loaves of bread, all 
hopeful of prize honors ; and, set against the windows 
to show their color and translucence, were bottles of 
maple syrup and tumblers of jelly. 

The display in the lower room of the hall was dis- 
tinctively of the fields and kitchen, while that of the 
room upstairs was as decidedly an exhibition of the 
arts of the sitting room and parlor. The array of 
fancy work was such as might rival the show-window 
of a dry-goods store. Every inch of space on the long 
tables was full, and many articles were tacked up on 
the walls or draped over lines as if hung up to dry 
indoors after a rainy Monday's wash. Patchwork 



296 New England and its Neighbors 

quilts were favorites for demonstrating a woman's 
prowess with the needle and taste in making com- 
binations. Some of them contained so vast a number 
of tiny pieces it made one weary just to look at them 
and think of the labor involved. Yet therein lay their 
merit. Such a quilt is a monument to the patience 
and skilful industry of the maker, and as such will be 
a source of pleasure to her as long as she lives. Quite 
likely it may be laid away as too good for common 
use and be handed down in the family as an heirloom. 
Besides its other excellences it has the virtue of being 
a record of feminine garments worn by the family and 
by the family friends — everyday dresses, wedding 
dresses, baby dresses. The whole gamut of human 
life is pictured in the texture of the coverlet, and the 
constructor can probably recognize and give some- 
thing of the history of each dress and person there 
represented. 

Other favorite articles shown at the cattle show were 
elaborate rag rugs, sofa pillows, home-knit mittens 
and stockings, worsted slippers, delicate doilies, and 
quantities of crocheting. " Mary Stevens done that," 
said a woman, picking up some of the most intricate 
of the embroidery and calling her husband's attention 
to it. " Ain't it remarkable how she can do such a 
lot with her needle, and she a cripple that can't put 
her hand up to her head, and not even feed herself! " 

I thought the needlework showed a distinct love of 



The Autumn Cattle Show 297 

color and prettiness quite independent of utility and 
fitness ; for certainly a good deal of it would be hope- 
lessly out of harmony in the average home. A more 
satisfactory phase of the exhibit was the housewifely 
thrift that was apparent in discovering possibilities in 
odds and ends of waste. Here was the old wearing 
apparel rejuvenated in the form of rag carpets, rugs, 
sofa pillows, etc., but the climax in this transformation 
of household debris was reached in a pretty vase that 
had acorns, suspender buttons, nails, iron nuts, and 
other hardware stuck into its yielding surface, and then 
the whole had been gilded. It was an ingenious use 
of rubbish, but the result looked like the product of 
some heathen nation of Africa or South America. 

Art pure and simple was represented by a number 
of hand-painted plates and silk banners and several 
pictures in oils, water-colors, and pastel. The subjects 
which the artists chose to depict were usually either 
flowers or impossibly romantic landscapes. But, 
though the pictures received their due share of ad- 
miration, they did not stir the hearts of most as did 
the long-houred intricacv of the fancy needlework. 

One corner of the upper hall was reserved for a 
children's department, and here was a six-year-old's 
loaf of bread occupying a place of honor amid a whole 
table full of cookery and canned fruits and jellies and 
pickles, the handiwork of other housekeepers of ten- 
der years. The children showed, too, a collection of 



298 New England and Its Neighbors 

small hens' eggs, several plates of fruit, some very 
big cucumbers and some very little pumpkins, and 
there were exhibited many child efforts at patchwork, 
splashers, cushions, and a variety of pufferies and vani- 
ties in the needlework line, for which my vocabulary 
has no names. The shining light among the boy 
exhibitors was one who showed sixty different kinds 
of beans of his own raising. If he did not get a half- 
dollar prize, I do not think the judges did their duty. 

The prize committees I saw at work had the air of 
feeling a due sense of their responsibility, and I sup- 
pose they worried out their decisions as fairly as they 
could, though these were sure to be regarded with 
critical dissent by the owners of the goods that did not 
find favor in their eyes. Still, the distinction of being 
one of the judges to some degree compensated for the 
grumbling of the dissatisfied — and, besides, the com- 
mittees felt at liberty to sample freely the more tooth- 
some things that fell under their judicial care, so that 
in certain cases the things judged well-nigh disappeared 
in the process of having their comparative merits settled. 

The exercises on the race-course began at eleven 
o'clock with a " Grand Cavalcade of Oxen." Oxen 
have largely given way to horses on the New England 
farms, but there are still plenty of them among the 
hills, and the cavalcade was impressively long and slow 
and sedate, except for a couple of little steers at the 
end of the procession who did not agree with the boy 



The Autumn Cattle Show 



299 



in charge of them as to where and how they should go. 
They kept the lad in turmoil all through the march, 
and put him to shame before the multitude. A touch 
of humor was given to the sober trail of the oxen by 
a long-legged farmer who rode astride of one of the 
creatures. Another man, known to every one as 
" Cephas," furnished merriment by riding in one of 
the ox-carts and playing a little organ with a crank. 
As Cephas was rigged up like a true clown in an out- 
landish costume of all the colors of the rainbow, this 
was a very popular feature of the parade. 




The Cavalcade of Oxen 

By the time the cavalcade of oxen had gone the 
rounds it was noon, and thought turned dinnerward. 
Some resorted to the eating tents, but the large major- 
ity went to their wagons and resurrected from under 
the seats various boxes, baskets, tin cans, and bottles, 



300 New England and its Neighbors 

and made preparations for an open-air feast. The 
food was generous in quantity, and it had a hoHday 
flavor in that there was cofi^ee for children and all, and 
the cake had frosting on it. To be sure the coffee 
was cold, and one drinking cup did for several of the 
picnickers, and the pie had caved in, but accidents and 
shortcomings are null and void on such an occasion. 
Often relatives who lived in different parts of the 
home town or the county got together for dinner and 
the victuals of both parties were passed about indis- 
criminately. This added to the interest, especially to 
the investigating minds of the children. Even the 
grown people showed a joking preference for a change 
from the home cooking. 

Immediately after dinner the folk began to resort 
to the "grand stand." This was just across the track 
from the judges' two-story pagoda, whence these digni- 
taries viewed the races. The only thing grand about 
' the stand was its name, for it was nothing but a few 
lines of unplaned plank seats terraced up a hillside. 
The seats were soon filled, and the overflow accommo- 
dated themselves on neighboring stones and hillocks. 
An old gentleman with a blue sash over his shoulder 
was cantering up and down on a big black horse, trying 
to keep the crowd off the race-course. This man was 
the marshal. "All go across that want tew," he would 
call out, " but we can't have yew blocking the track." 
He and two young fellows who assisted him made 



The Autumn Cattle Show 



301 



feints of riding down the crowd, but with all their 
efforts they could not keep the course clear. Several 
pairs of oxen were making ready to draw a load of 
stone on a stone-boat, and the crowd was bound to get 
close up, even if they stopped the whole performance. 




On the Grounds 

In this they displayed their Yankee independence, 
or, to use a term that more exactly describes it, their 
Yankee hoggishness. The men who were the most 
obstreperous were those who had been drinking. It 
was a no-license region, but it was not wholly parched 
for all that, and rumor said you could get " crab-apple 
bitters " right on the grounds. There was one man 



302 New England and its Neighbors 

in particular whose uncertain step and swaggering 
manner and sense of importance showed that he had 
found recent inspiration to great deeds in the bottle. 
He would obey no orders, and once when an official's 
horse crowded on him he caught its bridle and called 
the rider a hard name. This rider had red hair, and 
therefore, in the popular estimation, a temper, and he 
instantly responded by raising a little whip he carried 
and striking the drunken man square in the face. 
That made the latter furious, he dropped the bridle, 
broke into oaths, and would have snatched the orderly 
out of the saddle had not others restrained him. 
Gradually he subsided, but for some minutes serious 
fighting seemed immanent. 

" What an ugly craowd there is here ! " remarked 
the man next to me. " They're baon' to git on the 
track. Some one ought to send the band daown here 
an' let 'em blow them fellers aout ! 

" I wisht they'd quit their foolin' and begin," the 
man continued, after a pause. "This stun I'm settin' 
on ain't gettin' any softer. If I don't bring a seat 
with me tomorrer then I'm a liar." 

But now the oxen were drawing. They only dragged 
the stone-boat a few feet, but it made the great creatures 
pant and twist painfully. The contest was between 
two yokes, and after the first had been successful in 
its elTort the second tried it. They, too, succeeded, 
and then more stone was added. So the trials went 




I'o Buy ok Not to Bl'v 



The Autumn Cattle Show 303 

on, and the stones were piled higher till one pair or 
the other found the load beyond its strength to move. 
It seemed like cruel work, yet the friend at my elbow, 
regarding the final struggles of the champions, imper- 
turbably said, " They handle it pretty good naow, but 
I don't see haow any farmer can work with cattle — 
they're so blame slow. We ain't had none on our 
place sence I was a boy." 

Some of the oxen were presently attached to carts 
and driven about to show their training, and one of 
the drivers got up in his cart and invited the 
lookers-on to ride with him. " Don't stan' there 
star-gazin'," he called out, " when you got a chance 
to ride with a good-lookin' man." So a dozen chaffing 
young fellows clambered into the cart and sat around 
on the edges, and took a turn or two up and down the 
track. 

Later in the afternoon there was an exhibition of 
horses and colts, and the day ended with a bicycle 
race. 

The second day of the fair was distinguished from 
the first by being called " the horse show." There 
were frequent trotting matches on the race-course, 
both morning and afternoon, and the crowd was even 
larger than on the day previous. All the fakirs were 
on hand, and the uniformed brass band furnished en- 
livenment with its bursts of music. In short, there 
was for the pleasure-seekers all the din and dust and 



304 New England and its Neighbors 

turmoil that contribute to make the occasion notable 
and interesting in its strong contrast to the country 
quiet and repose of the rest of the year. 

The races were not professional, and were the more 
attractive on that account. We were not watching a 
contest between mere racing-machines, and every driver 
and horse had a readily perceived character of their 
own. The two races which overtopped all others in 
the interest aroused were the two which were most 
picturesque and amateurish. In the first a woman 
drove in the class set down on the programme as 
" Carriage Horses." She was a pleasing, modest- 
looking little person, with a fur muffler about her 
neck. The sympathies of the onlookers were hers 
from the beginning, and she drove in such a steady, 
determined way that, though her horse was not in first 
it never made a break, and she did the neatest driving 
of any of the contestants. Everybody cheered when 
the judges fastened the blue card to her horse that 
meant she had taken the first prize. 

The other race was open only to lads under fifteen 
and misses under twenty, and was designed more to 
show the deftness and capacities of the drivers than 
the mettle of their steeds. There were three entries, a 
dark-haired girl, stout and tanned, her poverty evi- 
denced by a hat three or four years out of date ; a 
light-haired girl much more ladyfied and smartly 
dressed than the other ; and a freckle-faced boy. 



The Autamn Cattle Show 305 

None of them had much to boast of in the way of 
a horse, but as it was to be an exhibition of skill rather 
than speed, the looks of the animals did not much 
matter. They lined up before the judges' stand, and 
at a given signal they all jumped from their buggies, 
hastily unhitched their horses and took off the har- 
nesses. Then they as hastily restored the harnesses 
and put the horses into the shafts again. All three 
were nervous and excited, and their feelings were 
shared to a considerable extent by the people intently 
watching them. 

Now the light-haired girl was through and leaped 
into her buggy and was off. The boy was only an 
instant behind, and it looked as if the dark-haired girl 
who started last had no chance. Round the course 
they went, and on the second circuit, which was the 
final and decisive one, it was seen that the dark-haired 
girl was gaining. Near the close she was about to 
pass her rivals when they laid on their whips and their 
steeds broke into a gallop and left her to come in 
belated and alone. The judges had already descended 
from their elevated stand to look into the manner in 
which the three had accomplished their harnessing. 
Only the dark-haired girl had done this perfectly. 
The other two had slighted details in their haste, and 
on the course they had not kept their horses in good 
control. The first prize escaped them, and the light- 
haired girl, who had felt sure of it and had decided 



3o6 New England and its Neighbors 

just how she would spend the money, wept with the 
bitterness of the disappointment. 

The crowds looking on at the races kept fluctuating 
— people were coming and people were going all the 
time, for no one cared to spend a whole day on any 
single feature of the fair, however fascinating. Every- 
body had brought a supply of spare cash, which must 
be spent, and, particularly in the children's case, this 
money burned in their pockets until it was gone. 
There was some regret at parting with the last of it, 
and yet a certain satisfaction in having the matter 
settled and completed. 

For the hungry there were dining tents set with 
long tables, and having at the rear improvised open- 
air kitchens. Eating resorts of a humbler sort were 
the booths where you could get a quick lunch of rolls 
and "Frankfort sausages — Coney Island style," and 
walk off with the repast in your hand. The " Coney 
Island style " was always emphasized by the vendors, 
and it was clear they thought it added vastly to the 
attraction. 

Then there were booths which made a specialty of 
candies, fruits, and beautifully tinted cold drinks, set 
forth seductively in large, clear glasses. Colored drinks 
apparently sold better than uncolored. A man would 
perhaps not pay any more for pink lemonade than for 
plain, but he would buy it quicker and feel he was 
getting more for his money. 



The Autvimn Cattle Show 



307 




Cooking Apparatus at the Rear of the Eating Tents 

All the vendors were shouters and spared no effort 
in vociferating the merits of their very desirable wares, 
but the man who made the most noise was a whip 
merchant. He stood in the tail of his wagon with 
his stock in trade in a rack at his side, while down 
below was a post about which he was continually snap- 
ping the whips to show how good they were. 

" There," says he, " is a whip you couldn't buy in 
the stores for less 'n a dollar and a quarter [snap, snap, 
snap], and, gents, I'm goin' to let you have it for 
seventy-five cents [snap, snap] . There's good timber 
in that whip. See — you can bend it like the old 
Harry ! Seventy-five cents ! Gosh, it's terrible, cut- 



3o8 New England and its Neighbors 

tin' the price that way, but I can't be here doin' noth- 
in', so I offer inducements [snap, snap]. Grandpa 
[pointing to an elderly man who is fumbling in his 
trousers pocket], you're goin' to take this whip, ain't 
you r 

The old man shakes his head, and instead of money 
extracts a generous bandana handkerchief and blows 
his nose. This was a disappointment to the whip 
man, but he promptly took up the thread of his dis- 
course and said: "Well, boys, now I'll tell you what 
I'll do. Here's a little red bird [picks up a whip with 
a strip of red on the handle] and here's a little yellow 
bird. Now I'll put them with the seventy-five center, 
and one dollar takes 'em all." 

So he keeps on till some one buys, and then he says 
he will make up a lot of six. " Here they be," he 
calls out. " No, there ain't but five ! I'm gettin' 
cross-eyed so I can't count. Well, there's another. 
Now I'm goin' to let you have the whole six for a 
dollar. You can't afford to go out and cut a stick 
when you c'n buy 'em like that;" and, between his 
eloquence and the merits (somewhat uncertain) of his 
whips, he found purchasers in plenty. 

There were several shooting galleries on the grounds, 
and their popularity was attested by the constant pop 
of rifles and by the ringing of bells which sounded 
automatically whenever a bull's-eye was hit. A still 
more popular amusement, and one that had an almost 




< v\irov^'V>Kt-s j'vVs 



The Pounding-machine 



The Autumn Cattle Show 309 

uninterrupted run of custom, was a merry-go-round. 
A hand-organ furnished music, and two stout, sweating 
men provided power, and the Httle painted horses 
spun around the circle very gayly. 

Not far from the merry-go-round was a pounding- 
machine. You gave a blow with a heavy wooden beetle, 
and a marker slid up a tall pole to show the weight of 
your stroke. " Well, well," shouts the fellow in 
charge, " who's the next man ? Come, gents, try 
your strength. Well, well, it's fun — only costs you 
half a dime, and you find out just how much the cor- 
rect weight of every blow is. Have a try, gents. You'll 
be sorry if you don't. You'll go home and hear your 
comrades tell what they can do, but you can't tell what 
you can do without telling a lie. I'd tell one hundred 
lies for a nickel, but I don't believe you would." 

One of the tents was a photograph gallery, where 
you could get your tintype taken for twenty-five cents. 
" Right this way," the rowdy-looking proprietor was 
shouting from the door, " we're on earth big as life 
and twice as natural." 

His next neighbor was expatiating on the unparal- 
leled charms of " Conkey's Great Mechanical World 
— perfect working figures — constantly in motion — 
free to all — we don't ask for money — just walk right 
in, ladies and gentlemen, and pay ten cents when you 
come out if you are satisfied — if you are not satisfied 
don't pay anything." 



3IO New England and its Neighbors 

Such as succumbed to this enticement found that 
the tent contained a platform on which were a number 
of miniature buildings and people made to represent 
a real village, while for a background there was a 
painted canvas depicting a fine assortment of blue 
cliffs, waterfalls, green fields, villas, and distant towns. 
But one's attention was chiefly absorbed by the busy 
inhabitants of the hamlet. They seemed rather rheu- 
matic and stiff in the joints, yet there was not a single 
idler in the whole lot. The chief mansion of the place 
was undergoing repairs, and a Lilliputian man sat on 
the peak of the roof shingling, a mason was everlast- 
ingly putting the final bricks on the chimney, and a 
painter was at work on a balcony. In the yard below 
was a man mixing mortar, and three carpenters at a 
bench were nailing, sawing, and planing. A woman 
churning on the piazza and another woman at the well 
drawing water represented the domestic side of the 
home. In other parts of the village were a black- 
smith's shop, before which a horse was being shod, a 
sawmill going full blast, and a railroad station with the 
officials all attending to business. Every thirty sec- 
onds a train rushed through the hamlet. It came from 
a hole at the left and disappeared into a hole at the 
right, labelled " Hoosac Tunnel." I paid ten cents 
when I went out. 

Another chance for amusement was furnished by a 
man with a blacked face and clothing stuffed out 



The Autumn Cattle Show 311 

ponderously with hay. He stood at the farther end 
of a little fenced-off space, and let any man throw three 
balls at him who would pay five cents for the privilege. 
If you hit him, you could have a cigar. 

One booth that was much patronized was known as 
the "fish-pond." In its open front was set a shallow 
tank of water, wherein were floating many little slips 
of wood, or "fish," each bearing a concealed number. 
On the walls of the booth were all the articles it was 
possible to draw numbered to correspond with the fish 
in the tank — and there were no blanks, the proprie- 
tor said. Every one got his money's worth and you 
might draw the grand prize — a pistol or a gold watch. 
Most of the articles were valueless trinkets, but among 
the rest hung the pistol and the gold watch, with 
naught between you and possession save a lucky ten- 
cent piece, and many a dime was staked fruitlessly on 
the will-o'-the-wisp chance. 

All things have an end, and cattle show is no excep- 
tion. As the afternoon of the second day waned and 
the exercises on the race-course were drawing to a close 
a growing restiveness was manifest in the crowd. The 
chill of the autumn evening was coming on and dis- 
persion began about four o'clock. The vendors of 
perishable fruits and eatables dropped their prices, and 
the work of taking down the tents and booths and 
packing up commenced, a tinge of forlornness and des- 
olation crept into the scene and the fun was over. Peo- 



312 New England and its Neighbors 

pie were in a hurry to depart, yet they were not in such 
haste as to neglect to drive around the race-course before 
they went out the gate. This spin on the track adds 
a final touch of completeness to the occasion, as no 
man who has any pride in his team neglects to make 
the circuit at least once. 

So ends the cattle show, though its memories with 
the meeting of friends, the excitement, the half-dozen 
whips for a dollar, the many circulars gathered free, and 
a colored advertising yardstick, not to mention the chil- 
dren's catbags, last a long way toward the fair of next 
year. 




Five Cents a Throw at the Dolls 



XIV 



CAPE COD FOLKS 



IT was densely dark when 
I arrived at Yarmouth 
one October evening. 
Viewed from the platform 
of the railway station the 
world about was a void of 
inky gloom. 

" Jf you're lookin' for the 
town," said a man at my 
elbow, "you'll find it over 
in that direction ; " and he 
pointed with his finger. 
" You follow the road and 
turn to the right when you've 
gone half a mile or so, and 
that'll take you straight into 
the village." 

" But I don't see any 
road," said I. 

" Well, it goes around the 
corner of that little shed over thar that the light from 
the depot shines on." 

3^3 




A \^illage Sign 



314 New England and its Neighbors 

" And how far is it to a hotel ? " 

" We ain't got no hotel in this place ; but Mr. Sut- 
ton, two houses beyond the post-office, he keeps peo- 
ple, and I guess he'll take you in all right." 

I trudged off along the vague highway, and at length 
reached the town street, a narrow thoroughfare solidly 
overarched by trees. Dwellings were numerous on 
either side, and lights glowed through curtained win- 
dows. How snug those silen-t houses looked ; and 
how cheerless seemed the outer darkness and the 
empty street to the homeless stranger ! I lost no 
time in hunting up Mr. Sutton's, and the shelter he 
granted brought a very welcome sense of relief. 

When I explored Yarmouth the next day I found 
it the most attenuated town I had ever seen. The 
houses nearly all elbowed each other for a distance of 
two or three miles close along a single slender roadway. 
Very few dwellings ventured aside from this double 
column. Apparently no other situation was orthodox, 
and I suppose the familes which lived off from this one 
street must have sacrificed their social standing in so 
doing. 

Yarmouth was settled in 1639 and is the oldest 
town on the Cape. Its inhabitants in the past have 
been famous seafaring folk, and fifty years ago almost 
every other house was the domicile of a retired sea- 
captain, and in the days of the sailing vessels the Yar- 
mouth men voyaged the world over, A certain class 



Cape Cod Folks 315 

of them went before the mast, but the majority were 
ship's officers. A goodly number of the latter amassed 
wealth in the India and China trade. This wealth has 
descended in many instances still intact to the genera- 
tion of to-day, and accounts for the town's air of easy- 
going comfort. Fortunes, however, are no more drawn 
from the old source, and at present the ambitious youth 
who aspires to riches turns his eyes cityward. The sea 
has ceased to promise a bonanza. Even the local fish- 
ing industry is wholly dead, though it is only a few 
decades since the town had quite a mackerel fleet ; but 
the little craft are all gone now, and nothing remains 
of the old wharves save some straggling lines of black 
and broken piles reaching out across the broad marshes 
that lie between the long street and the salt water. 

These marshes are of rather more economic impor- 
tance to modern Yarmouth than the sea itself; for 
grass and rank sedges cover them and furnish a con- 
siderable proportion of the hay that is harvested. I 
liked to loiter on their wet levels and watch the men 
swing their scythes. I noticed that they left un- 
touched the coarse grass that grew on the strips of 
sand. " That's beach grass," said one of the mowers 
with whom I talked. " The stock won't eat that, nor 
any other creatures won't eat it that I know of except 
skunks. Thar's plenty of them chaps along the 
shore on these ma'shes, and me 'n' my dog kitch a lot 
of 'em here every winter." 



3i6 



New England and Its Neighbors 



The route back to the town from the marsh on 
which this skunk hunter was at work led across a low 
ridge of stony pasture-land where the blackberry vines 
displayed their ruddy autumn foliage and brightened 
the earth like flashes of flame. A most beautiful little 
lane threaded along the crest of the ridge. It was only 




Anchoring his Haystacks 

about a dozen feet broad and was hemmed in by stone 
walls overgrown with bushes, among which rose an 
occasional tree. The paths trodden by the cows' hoofs 
in the turf of the lane wandered irregularly along, avoid- 
ing obstructions, and, as a rule, following the line of 
the least resistance. There was, however, now and 



Cape Cod Folks 317 

then, a deflection, which the cattle had made pur- 
posely toward the thickest of the bordering brush, 
intent on crowding up against the twigs to rid them- 
selves of flies. How shadowy and protected and pas- 
toral the lane was ! I envied the boys who drove the 
cows and thus had the chances to make a daily renewed 
acquaintance with its arboreal seclusion. 

Not far from where the lane emerged on the village 
street stood a dwelling that I looked at with interest 
every time I passed. It was a low and primitive struc- 
ture, and behind it was a little barn surmounted by 
a swordfish weather vane. Swordfish or ships, I 
observed, were the favorite vanes everywhere for Cape 
Cod outbuildings. The attraction of this home, with 
its curious air of repose under the shadowing trees, 
grew until one day I ventured into the yard. Near 
the barn a gray-bearded ancient had just hitched a 
venerable horse into a wagon, and was preparing to 
grease the vehicle's wheels. I spoke with him, and 
after some preliminaries said, "It appears to me you 
have about the oldest house in town." 

He gave me a sudden look of surprise ovit of the 
corner of his eyes, the purport of which I did not at 
the moment understand, and then went on with his 
work. " Ye-ye-yes," he replied, in his hasty, stam- 
mering way ; for his thoughts seemed to start ahead of 
his tongue and the latter gained control with difiiculty. 
" Ye-ye-yes, he is old, but he's a good hoss yit ! " 



3 1 8 New England and its Neighbors 

" Oh, I didn't say horse," I remarked quickly. " I 
was speaking of your house," 

" My h-h-h-h-house, hm-m-m ! That — that's one 
of the old settlers. Must be two hundred year old ; 
and do you see that pear tree thar with the piece of 
zinc nailed over the bad place in the trunk, and the 
iron bands around up where the branches begin, so't 
they won't split off? I s'pose that pear tree's as old 
as the house." 

" What kind is it ? " 

" It-it-it-it's wha-what we call the old-fashioned 
button pear. Uncle Peter Thacher that had this 
place years ago used to pick up the pears and sell 
'em to the boys for a cent apiece. They ain't much 
larger'n wa'nuts. They're kind of a mealy kind of 
a pear, you know — very good when they first drop 
off, but they rot pretty quick." 

The man had finished applying the wheel grease 
now, and he clambered into the wagon and drove off, 
while I walked on, I passed entirely through the 
village into a half-wild region beyond, where much 
of the land was covered by a dense pine wood. There 
were occasional farm clearings ; but I noticed that the 
houses of this outlying district were generally vacant. 
Opposite one of the deserted homes was a corn-field 
that attracted my attention because the tops of the 
corn stalks had been cut off and carted away, and the 
ears left on the stubs to ripen. This was a common 



Cape Cod Folks 



3^9 




An Autumn Corn-field 
The tops of the stalks have been cut off for fodder 

way of treating corn years ago, but is seldom seen 
now. Here and there in the field were scarecrows — 
sometimes an old coat and hat hoisted on a stake ; 
sometimes a pole with a fluttering rag at the top, and, 



320 New England and its Neighbors 

suspended a little lower down on the same pole, a 
couple of rusty tin cans that rattled together dubiously 
in the breeze. As I was leaning over the roadside 
wall contemplating this corn-field a man came along 
and accosted me, and I improved the opportunity to 
ask him why so many of the houses of the neighbor- 
hood were unoccupied. 

" Wal," said he, " people don't Hke to live outside 
o' the villages nowadays. Sence the fishin' give out, 
the young folks all go off to get work, and they settle 
somewhar else, and the old folks move into the towns. 
In this house across the road, though, an old woman 
lived, and she died thar two years ago. She was kind 
o' queer, and some say she wa'n't a woman at all. 
She wore women's clothes, but she had a beard and 
shaved every mornin', and her hair was cut short, and 
she carried on the farm and did the work just like a 
man." 

My acquaintance spit meditatively and then inquired, 
" Have you seen Hog Island ? " 

" No," I responded. 

" You'd ought to. It ain't fur from tother end of 
Yarmouth village. You go down the lane along the 
crick thar and ask the way of Jimmy Holton that 
lives by the bridge. He'll tell you. It ain't really 
an island, but a bunch o' trees in a little ma'sh, and 
they grow so't if you see 'em from the right place 
they look just like a hog — snout, tail, and all." 



Cape Cod Folks 



321 



The man had in his hand a large scoop with a row 
of long wooden teeth projecting from its base. This 
is the kind of implement 
used in gathering most of 
the Cape Cod cranberries, 
and the man was on his 
way to a berry patch he 
cultivated in a boggy hol- 
low, not far distant. 1 ac- 
companied him and found 
his wife and children on 
their knees, each armed 
with a scoop with which 
they were industriously 
scratching through the 
low mat of vines. Where 
they had not yet picked, 
the little vines were 
twinkled all over with ripe 
berries — genuine autum n 
fruit, waxen-skinned, rud- 
dy-hued, and acid to the 
tongue — as if the atmos- 
pheric tartness and cool- 
ness had helped the sun 
to dye and flavor them. 




A Cranberry Picker 



The bog was not at all wild. In preparing it for 
cranberry culture, it had been thoroughly tamed. 



322 



New England and its Neighbors 



Brush and stumps had been cleared off and the turf 
removed. Then it had been levelled and coated with 
a layer of sand. It was encompassed and more or less 
cut across by ditches ; and, in the process of clearing, 
steep banks had been heaved up around the borders. 




Harvest on a Cranberry Bog 

" Cranberries are a great thing for the Cape," said 
my friend. " They're the best crop we have, but it's 
only late years we've gone into 'em. When I was a 
boy, the only cranberries we used to have was a little 
sort that growed in the bogs wild ; and we never 
thought nothin' o' dreanin' the ma'shes and goin' into 
the business the way we do now. 

" My bog ain't fust class. A man's got to put a 



Cape Cod Folks 323 

lot o' work into raisin' cranberries to do the thing just 
right, and when you only got a small bog you kind o' 
neglectify it. There's one bog about a mile from here 
that's got sixteen acres in it, and they're always tendin* 
to it in one way and another the year around. They 
keep it clear of weeds, and if there's any sign of fire- 
bug they steep tobacco and spray the vines. If there's 
a dry spell they rise the water, though that don't do 
as much good as it might. You c'n water a plant all 
you want to, but waterin' won't take the place o' rain. 

" Pretty soon after we finish pickin' we f^ood the 
bogs and they stay flooded all winter, if the mushrats 
don't dig through the banks. The water keeps the 
plants from freezin' and seems to kind o' fertilize them 
at the same time. The ponds make grand skatin' 
places. They freeze over solid — no weak spots — 
and they ain't deep enough to be dangerous, even if 
you was to break through." 

This man's statement as to the importance of cran- 
berry culture to the dwellers on the Cape was in nowise 
exaggerated. When I continued my journeyings later 
to the far end of the peninsula I saw reclaimed berry 
bogs innumerable. There was scarcely a swampy 
depression anywhere but that had been ditched and 
diked and the body of it laid off as smooth as a floor 
and planted to cranberries. The pickers were hard at 
work — only two or three of them on some bogs, on 
others a motley score or more. It seemed as if the 



324 New England and its Neighbors 

task engaged the entire population irrespective of age 
and sex ; and the picking scenes were greatly bright- 
ened by the presence of the women in their calico 
gowns and sunbonnets or broad-brimmed straw hats. 
Often the bogs were far enough from home, so that 
the workers carried their dinners and made the labor 
an all-day picnic, though I thought the crouching posi- 
tion must grow rather wearisome after a time. 

Aside from the fertile and productive bogs the aspect 
of the Cape was apt to be monotonous and sombre. 
The cultivated fields appeared meagre and unthrifty, 
the pastures were thin-grassed and growing up to 
brush, and, more predominant than anything else in 
the landscape, were the great tracts of scrubby wood- 
land, covered with dwarfed pines and oaks, often fire- 
ravaged, and never a tree in them of respectable size. 
Ponds and lakes were frequent. So were the inlets 
from the sea with their borderings of salt marsh ; 
indeed, the raggedness of the shore line was sugges- 
tive of a constant struggle between the ocean and the 
continent for the possession of this slender outreach of 
the New England coast. The buffeting of the fierce 
sea winds was evident in the upheave of the sand dunes 
and the landward tilt of the exposed trees — trees that 
had a very human look of fear, and seemed to be trying 
to flee from the persecuting gales, but to be retarded 
by laggard feet. 

At the jumping-ofF tip of the Cape is Provincetown, 




In Provincetown 



Cape Cod Folks 325 

snugged along the shore, with steep protecting hills at 
its back. It is a town that has an ancient old-world 
look due to its narrow streets, with houses and stores 
and little shops crowded close along the walks. It is 
a fishy place, odorous of the sea, and the waterside is 
lined with gray fish-shanties and storehouses. Many 
spindle-legged wharves reach out across the beach, and 
there are dories and small sailing-craft in and about 
the harbor, and always a number of schooners, and 
occasionally a larger vessel. 

The inhabitants love the sea or else are involun- 
tarily fascinated by it. They delight to loiter on the 
wharves and beach, and to sit and look out on old 
ocean's wrinkled surface and contemplate its hazy 
mystery. One would fancy they thought it replete 
with beneficent possibilities, and that they were willing 
lingerers dreamily expecting something fortunate or 
fateful would heave into view from beyond the dim 
horizon. The children seek the beach as assiduously 
as their elders. It is their playground, their news- 
paper. They poke about the wharves strewn with 
barrels and boxes, spars, chains, ropes, anchors, etc. ; 
they find treasures in the litter that gathers on the 
sands ; they dig clams on the mud-flats ; they race and 
tumble, and they learn all that is going on in the 
shipping. 

The most exciting event while I was in town was 
an unexpected catch of squids in the harbor. Squids 



326 New England and its Neighbors 

are the favorite bait of the cod fishermen, but at 
Provincetown there is rarely a chance to get this 
bait so late in the year. The squids sought the 
deepest portion of the bay, and a little fleet of small 
boats collected above and captured them by the barrel- 
ful. One midday I stood watching the boats from 
a wharf. Two men who had come onto the wharf 
soon after 1 did were regarding the scene from near 
by. " It's queer how them squids hang in that deep 
hole thar," said one of the men. 

" They bring a good price for cod bait, I believe," 
said I. 

"Yes, Willie Scott, that lives next door to me, he 
made seven dollars this morning and has gone out 
ag'in. I'll bet his eyes are full of squid juice this 
minute. The squids don't trouble much that way, 
but they'll flip up a smeller (that's what we call their 
arms) and give you a dose once in a while, spite of all 
you can do. It makes your eyes sting, but the sting 
don't last long," 

" How large are these squids ? " I asked. 

" Oh, they're small — not much more'n a foot and 
a half, smellers and all." 

The other man now spoke. He was short and 
dark, had rings in his ears, and his accent was de- 
cidedly foreign. " Cap'n Benson," said he, to his 
companion, " I seen the butt end of a squid smeller 
big as this barrel what I'm settin' on." 



Cape Cod Folks 



327 



Cap'n Benson puffed a few times judiciously at his 
pipe. " Yes," he acknowledged presently, " there's a 
good many kinds of squids, and they do kitch 'em 
large enough so one'll last a cod schooner for bait a 
whole v'yage. We only get a little kind here." 




Looking over the Cod Lines 

The wharf we were on was nearly covered with 
racks on which a great quantity of salted codfish had 
been spread to dry, and Cap'n Benson informed me 
there was plenty more fish awaiting curing in the hold 
of a slender-masted vessel that lay alongside the wharf. 

" She's a Grand-Banker — this schooner is that 
brought these fish," he continued. " We ain't got 
but six Grand-Bankers now, and only fifteen fresh 



328 New England and its Neighbors 

fishermen. The fresh fishermen, you know, don't 
go farther'n the Georges and the West Banks. Forty 
years ago we had two hundred fishing schooners owned 
here, and we had sixty-seven whale ships where now 
we got only three. Provincetown is played out. 
This mornin' me and this man with me didn't have 
but one hour's work, and we won't have over two 
hours this afternoon. How you goin' to make a 
livin' at twenty cents an hour with things goin' on 
that way ? Forty years ago you couldn't get enough 
men at three dollars and a half a day." 

The man with the ear-rings had picked up a piece of 
shell and was attempting to drop it from the height 
of his shoulder through a crack in the wharf. He 
failed to accomplish his purpose though he tried again 
and again. 

" Mr. Klunn, if you want to drop that shell through 
thar, just mention the minister," advised Cap'n Benson. 

He had hardly spoken when Mr. Klunn, let the 
shell fall, and it shpped straight through the crack. 
" I godfrey ! " exclaimed the Cap'n, " I did it for you. 
I never known that to fail. When I been whaling, 
and we was cutting up the whale, you couldn't some- 
times strike a j'int. You'd try and try and you couldn't 
strike it, and then you'd stop and say ' Minister ! ' and 
it was done already — you'd hit the j'int right off." 

" I seen a whale heave up a shark the half as big 
as a dory," remarked Mr. Klunn, after a pause. 



Cape Cod Folks 329 

" To be sure," the Cap'n commented. " How- 
somever, there's people say a whale can't take in 
nothin' bigger'n a man's hand ; but my idea is that's 
after he's been eatin' and had all he .wanted." 

" By gosh ! a whale got a swallow so big enough, if 
he hongry, he swallow a man easy," Mr. Klunn de- 
clared. " Some peoples ain't believe about Jonah, but 
they believe if they seen as much whales that I have." 

" I'm thinkin' about them squids," Cap'n Benson 
said, as he shook his pipe free from ashes and slipped 
it into the pocket of his jacket. " I guess when the 
tide comes in to-night, I'll haul out my boat and see 
if I can't get some of 'em." 

" I ain't had no boat since the big storm," observed 
the man with ear-rings. 

" What storm was that ? " I inquired. 

"It was when the Portland went down, in Novem- 
ber, 1899," explained Cap'n Benson. "We had an 
awful time — wharves smashed, boat-houses carried off, 
and vessels wrecked. It begun to blow in the night. 
Fust thing I knowed of, it was my chimley comin' 
down." 

" I was sick that time," said the ear-ring man. " The 
doctor had to give me murphine pills. I was in the 
bed two, three days, and I lose one hundred and 
eighty-seven dollar by the storm. You remember 
that schooner, Cap'n Benson, what the two old mens 
was drownded on ? " 



330 New England and its Neighbors 

"Oh, I remember — washed overboard out here in 
the harbor, and the wind took the schooner bang up 
ag'in a wharf, and the cap'n, he made a jump and 
landed all right, and he never stopped to look behind 
to see what become of his vessel nor nobody. He 
run up into the town and he took the next train for 
California." 

" Yas, that's true," Mr. Klunn affirmed. 

Later, while stopping over night at a Truro farm- 
house, a few miles back on the Cape, I heard more of 
the great storm. " Thar was three days of it," said 
my landlady, " startin' on Saturday. It thundered 
and lightened on Sunday, and it snowed Monday. 
Everythin' that wa'n't good 'n' strong was blowed 
down. It blowed the shed off the end of our house, 
and it blowed a window in upstairs, and it blowed the 
saddle boards off the roof and some o' the shingles. 
We had the highest tide we've ever had, and there 
was places where the sea-water come across the roads. 
Monday the bodies begun to be washed ashore from 
the Portland^ and they kep' comin' in for two weeks." 

Truro is a scattered little country place. Its homes 
dot every protected hollow. The only buildings that 
seemed independent of the smiting of the winter blasts 
were the town hall and the Baptist, Methodist, and 
Catholic churches. These stood in a group on the 
barest, bleakest hilltop. The churchyards were thick- 
set with graves, and among the stones grew little tan- 




,f in' ii^vtatis. 



•■m 



i^' 




An Old Wharf 



Cape Cod Folks 



33^ 



gles of sumachs and other bushes, but the sandy height 
had not a single tree. 

On this hill, years ago, stood still another public 
institution — a windmill. "It sot high up thar, so't 




-^ifff^iiTffii^fiiimiifiri 

Tubiic Buildings on the Hilltop 

it was in sight all over town," said my landlady. "You 
could see the miller puttin' the sails on the arms, and 
then when they got to turnin' we'd know which way 
the wind blowed. But some days there wouldn't be 
no wind, and the sails might hang there and not turn 
the whole day long. We used to raise this yaller In- 
jun corn then, a good deal more'n we do now on 
the Cape, and we raised rye, and we'd take the grain 
to the windmill to grind. You can't buy no such corn 
meal or rye meal now as we used to get from that old 
mill. We e't hasty-pudding them days, and it used 



2^2 New England and its Neighbors 

to be so nice ! and we had Johnny-cake, and hasty- 
pudding bread that was made by putting some of the 
hasty-pudding into flour and mixing 'em up into dough 
together." 

Of the churches on the hill the Catholic was the 
newest. It was a little shed of a building with a gilt 
cross surmounting the front gable. The attendants 
were chiefly Portuguese, the nationality which at pres- 
ent constitutes the great majority of the coast fisher- 
folk. Most of the fishing is done in rowboats, and 
the fish are caught in nets fastened to lines of stakes 
offshore. These fish-traps, as they are called, are 
visited daily. The crew of a rowboat usually consists 
of a " Cap'n," who is pretty sure to be a Yankee, and 
seven men who are likely to be all Portuguese. Truro 
had four rowboats thus manned. They started out 
at three in the morning and returned anywhere from 
noon to eight in the evening. 
-vj "It's hard work," explained my landlady, "and the 
Yankee men don't take up fishin', late years, the way 
they did. I reckon they c'n make more money farm- 
m . 
\-' I wondered at this. The sandy soil did not look 
productive, and yet the houses as a rule were painted 
and in good repair, and conveyed a pleasing impres- 
sion of prosperity The people with whom I talked 
seemed to be satisfied. " We git good crops," said 
a farmer I questioned about agricultural aff'airs. " We 



Cape Cod Folks 



333 




A Cape Cod Roadway 

c'n raise most all kinds o' vegetables in the hollers, 
and good grass, too, though our heaviest crops o' 
grass we git off'n the ma'shes. The cows like salt 
hay fully as well as they do fresh hay, and they like 
sedge best of all, because it's sweet ; but you have to 
be careful about feedin' 'em too much of that or the 
milk'll taste. Of course we got plenty o' pasture 
on the higher ground and plenty o' timber sich as 'tis. 
The trees don't flourish, though, and you won't find 
many that are much bigger'n your leg. This is a 
great country for wild berries — blueberries, black- 
berries, and huckleberries. Our Portuguese here — 
land ! they git half their livin' in the woods. Besides 



334 New England and its Neighbors 

berries there's beach plums and wild cherries. But the 
cherries we don't use for common eatin'. We put 
'em up in molasses, and they kind o' work and are 
good to take for the stomach and the like o' that." i 

I climbed over the hills round about Truro and 
tramped the sandy, deeply rutted roads faithfully. It 
was weary work to one used to solid earth. Such 
lagging progress ! I could never get a good grip with 
my feet, and slipped a little backward every time I 
took a step forward. Except along the watercourses 
nature's growths never attained the least exuberance. 
The grass on the slopes and uplands was very thin, 
and with the waning of the season much of it had 
become wispy and withered. It was mingled with 
goldenrod and asters that hugged the earth on such 
short, stunted stems as to be hardly recognizable. 

The landscape as viewed from a height had a curi- 
ously unstable look. Its form had not been moulded 
by attrition, but the soil had been blown into vast 
billows that had the appearance of a troubled sea 
whose waves were on the point of advancing and over- 
whelming the habitations and all the green growing 
things in the vales. Some of the dunes really do 
advance, and the state has been obliged to make 
appropriations and devise means for checking their 
depredations. The work has chiefly been accom- 
plished with the aid of beach grass. This has an 
affiliation for sand, and you can stick one of its coarse. 



Cape Cod Folks 



335 



wiry tufts in anywhere and it will grow. It only needs 
to be methodically planted, and the shifting dunes are 
fast bound and the winds assail them in vain. 

Some of the characteristics of this beach grass seemed 
also to be characteristics of the people of the Cape. 
They have the same hardiness and endurance, and, 
like the beach grass, have adapted themselves to their 
environment and thrive where most would fail. With 
its omnipresent sand and dwarf woods, the Cape, as I 
saw it at the fag end of the year, appeared rather dreary, 
but the prosperous look of the homes was very cheer- 
ing. These are nearly all owned free from debt, and 
that nightmare of the agriculturists in so many parts 
of New England — a mortgage — is happily almost 
unknown among the Cape Cod folks. 




The Mowers on the Marshes 



The Isle of the Shamrock 

By Clifton Johnson 

Author of " Among English Hedgerows," "Along French Byways," etc. 
Fully Illustrated. Crown 8vo. Gilt top. Boxed. $2.00 net 



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lished in a long time." — Brooklyn Eagle. 
*' Deserves to be read and remembered." 

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"For more kindly appreciation no people could ask." 

— Chicago Tribune. 
** A most interesting book, full of sketches and anecdotes." 

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Don Quixote 

By Miguel De Cervantes 

Edited by Clifton Johnson 
For School and Home Reading 

With Ten Illustrations by George Cruikshank. Cloth. i2nio. 75 cents 



" An admirable piece of editing has been done by Clifton Johnson. 
He has omitted the obnoxious portions and many of the unpleasant 
details which made the original objectionable. The result is a pleas- 
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— The Chautauquan. 

The Macmillan Company 

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Among English Hedgerows 

By Clifton Johnson 

With an Introduction by Hamilton W. Mabie 
Fully Illustrated. Crozvn 8vo. Gilt top. Boxed. $2.2^ 



One of the most beautiful of illustrated books. The 
author as far as possible lived the life of the people who 
figure in these pages, and we have delightful accounts of 
village characters and glimpses of quaint old English homes. 

*•• The book deserves to succeed, not only in America, 
but in the country which it so lovingly depicts." 

— The Spectator., London. 

"The style is direct and unpretending, and the author 
succeeds in imparting his own enjoyment of scenes and 
characters to his readers." — New York Times. 

" One of the best descriptions of rural England which 
ever has appeared." — Congregatlonalist. 



The Macmillan Company 

66 Fifth Avenue, - - - New York 



Along French Byways 

By Clifton Johnson 

Uniform with "The Isle of the Shamrock" ano 
"Among English Hedgerows" 

Full-^ Illustrated. Crozvn 8vo. Gilt top. Boxed. $2.2^ 



" Mr. Johnson's book is of a peculiarly winning sort. 
We know of no other which describes with so much 
homely simplicity and sympathetic pleasantness the rural 
life of the fair land of France." — New York Tribune. 

" Gives a singularly faithful and complete and well- 
balanced idea of the French peasantry and French rural 
life, manners, and customs." — Boston Herald. . 

" A treasure in the literature of travel." 

— Universalist Leader. 

" Mr. Johnson has both the gift of sympathy and the 
gift of observation ; he knows how to reach the people 
whom he wants to describe. His book has the charm of 
simplicity and of sympathy with humble but picturesque 
life in a very picturesque country." — The Outlook. 



The Macmillan Company 

66 Fifth Avenue, _ _ _ New York 



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